Using creative writing to enrich student experience and achievement Liz Barrett (Education, Childhood & Inclusion) Cathy Malone (Student Learning Services) Chair: Viv Thom

Session Aims  To suggest a rationale for using creative writing in teaching and learning  To identify some distinctive features of creative (v. academic) writing  To offer a prompt for writing  To model the writer’s workshop process

Uses of creative writing in teaching and learning  Emotional engagement (affective v. cognitive)  Personal development (learning incomes and identity formation)  Transformation (revelatory v. revealed)  Memory (makes the abstract concrete)  Understanding (through parable, metaphor, association)  Writing development (dialogue about language and engagement in the drafting process)  Communities of practice (writers workshop)

How can creative writing be used?  Stand-alone sessions applied to specific module content  Throughout a module for a specific purpose (e.g. to introduce or reflect on module content)  As the focus of the module as an approach to knowing or enquiry (e.g. Lifewriting & Education)  As part of a module in relation to the development of specific skills (e.g. writing development or the evaluation of sources)  To promote a community of practice (a mutually supportive, critical and reflective space)

Three Writer’s Maxims  The concrete not the abstract  The particular not the general  Show don’t tell

Another person’s moccasins  1 st person voice  Other Voices  Point of View

The Riddle  1 st person voice (topic is the speaker)  Personification (becomes human)  Metaphor (comparison with something unusual)  Qualification (what it is and is not)  Description (using the senses)  Function and Habitat (what and where)

Freewriting  separates generating from editing and critiquing.  sidestep inhibiting self-consciousness, procrastination.  basis of journal writing, therapeutic writing.  develops with practice. Rules  DO NOT STOP WRITING AT ANY TIME  Grammar, spelling, punctuation and sense are not important. Repetition is fine. ( Adapted from P.Elbow 2000 Everyone Can Write)

Writer’s Workshop  The space and the silence  The conversation  The author response

Summary  Any questions?  Other examples of practice?  Further development? A SIG?