About 20 years ago I taught in a large primary school with Brian Moses. Brian also wrote poetry, went on to win an Eric Gregory award and now works freelance as a writer. But in those days we were young, eager teacherwriters, discovering just how creative children could be. We would share writing ideas, swap examples and write our own models - and I can still remember running to the staff room at break-time to show him some children’s writing. Now, where did that excitement go? Working in schools over the past year has led me to a number of conclusions about what helps to strengthen pupils’ imagination and draw on their innate creativity.

Build up the reading storehouse

My first port of call is reading. To make up a fairy story we could draw on the thousands that we have read - the kings, queens, princesses, old beggar women, a hare, a spider, a forest, a lake, a lonely stone tower. If we climb the cold, stone steps to the very top and open the door - there will be the inevitable princess, spinning straw into gold, and if we kiss, she will sleep for 100 years. When you really know a genre, then writing becomes easier because you draw on a vast store of well-known characters, typical settings, events, structures and language. As writers we manipulate this storehouse of possibilities, established through constant reading as a writer. Reading provides the building blocks for writing. Reading helps to strengthen and open up the imagination.

Build up the writing repertoire

Years ago, I realised that if I introduced similes early in the year, then in other sessions, where the focus was elsewhere, similes would creep in. Some pupils were gathering a range of techniques and approaches that they could draw on in their own writing. I began to build a writing “repertoire” of techniques.

How to make pictures in the reader’s mind:

* choosing the right word - precise nouns (“Siamese” rather than “cat”), necessary adjectives (“rusty letter box” not “red letter box”), powerful verbs (“hobbled” not “went”)

* similes - using “like” or “as”

* metaphors - pretending that one thing is another

* personification - making objects come alive

* varying sentences - altering sentences to create different effects.

How to make sound effects:

* alliteration - repeating the same sound to make a sentence memorable

* onomatopoeia - using words that echo their meaning

* repetition - learning when a new word is needed and when a repetition will provide emphasis

* rhymes - making language memorable and powerful.

How to make the writing visually effective:

* shape - thinking about line length, font type and size, the place of images

* Pattern - repeating parts of a text, making regular breaks.

It seems to me that as a writer I am still building on this basic repertoire. Sometimes I take a leap forwards on my own, through constant investigation and experimentation - other times I add to my own repertoire through reading other writers. The process is never ending.

Writing, experience and feelings

Most of the writing that I see in primary schools has a shared text as the starting point. While it is true that whenever we write our reading experience lurks in the background for us to draw on, it does not mean that every writing session has to start from a shared text. We write best about what we know and what matters. Young writers need to have first-hand experiences that help to provide a rich content for their writing. I still hoard starting points - stuffed owls, candles, posters of paintings, slides of spiders, autumn leaves, a collection of skulls, a bicycle to draw. Take something as simple as the economy of this riddle (a compass):

Its slick silver slit legs slither apart.

A ballet-dancer

accomplishes the splits.

Kyron, age 10.

Playful ideas also offer opportunities to excite and challenge the imagination. I still wonder at Matthew’s poem “She”, written when he was seven.

She is like a golden star,

Slinking into the night.

She is like a flower of light.

She is like a silent pair of lips,

Saying something unknown.

She is like a brilliant spurt of love.

She is like an ungrateful silence.

Ultimately, young writers bring together the ability to capture experiences that matter and to play with language with increasing sophistication. Recreating experience, playing with ideas and language and exploring feelings - these are an essential part of the writing curriculum. You cannot write poetry and narrative out of a void - they arise from passion, excitement, having a tale that has to be told, from feelings.

Use writing journals

One of the biggest shifts that can be made towards developing young writers comes through the use of writing journals. Every writer I know uses a journal. This can become a store for different techniques, reminders, word lists, ideas, and possibilities. So much that we teach can easily become lost. For example, at some point we have all brainstormed lists of words to use instead of “said”. This list needs to be put into the writing journal for future reference. Every time the pupils write they use the journal to act as a prompt. In it they can find out how to set out dialogue, different ways to open a story. Some of the pupils that I have worked with recently use their journals to save good words, useful phrases, images they have invented. Others take notes during lessons, jotting down ideas during shared writing. They are beginning to act like writers.

SATs and creativity

One of the reasons authors shun what happens in school is because of the ridiculous notion that anyone should be asked to write a story in 45 minutes. When I asked Jan Mark about this, she laughed. A short story can take her six weeks. I asked Joan Aiken for the sort of advice we might give young writers faced with such a task. Like other authors, she was aghast at the idea but in the end wisely commented: “I would advise this unfortunate child to write the last line first.”

The idea of the 45-minute SATs dash is built on the supposition that stories can arrive at times of stress, pre-packaged, known before they are created, with little room for growth. Almost as if you do not have to create or imagine. Writing narrative is not necessarily a matter of deciding what will happen and then simply writing it down.

Of course, there are some writers who do like to plan thoroughly and then write. PG Wodehouse was a great example of this group of “planners” - he planned every chapter, every paragraph, every joke. This meant that he only had to write one draft. Many other writers are “explorers”, seeking the story through the writing. A writer such as Helen Cresswell starts with a seed of an idea and then sees what might be grown. The current SATs test favours “planners”, not “explorers”. The saddest aspect is that as the pressure mounts, it leads some teachers towards teaching too directly to the test. Obviously, test preparation is important. But too many pupils spend too much of their final year in primary school drilled into learning a set story - a set plot, set events, set phrases to use. If you do not believe this then I suggest that you ask a SATs marker. It is too common. Once we have passed the 2002 mark there is a chance to alter the SATs and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is considering its next move. Writing scenes, short creative tasks or descriptions might be a more sensible option, where young writers demonstrate what they can do with language within a sensible time limit.

Why creativity matters

Some 30 years ago I remember a couple of lads chatting with me about going to a football match for the first time. They had been in the stands, singing with thousands of others. Kenny tried to tell me what it had been like - but he stammered and stuttered. He had experienced something uplifting, but could not put it into words - he could not recreate and communicate the experience. As he struggled, “it was, like, err, it was great and like...” his face twisted with frustration. His hands clenched into fists. For the opposite of creation is destruction. If we cannot take what happens to us and frame it into words then how do we understand our experiences? That ability to pin down our lives with words is vital to helping us explain ourselves to the world and the world to ourselves. How else can we take a step out of the darkness of our self?

Teaching children to become creative writers has more importance than gaining any level or raising standards. (Having said that - if we develop pupils as creative writers then standards will rise inevitably.) It is to do with helping them cope with themselves and all that life may throw at them. Ultimately, it is to do with the human spirit and how we cherish that within ourselves and within the children we work with. We have to stop worrying about what some imaginary Office for Standards in Education ogre might say and get a grip on what we are doing. Literacy should never be dull. It is the stuff of life and should be central to our children’s world. Let us make it so.

Pie Corbett is a poet, teacher and freelance writer