‘Found Objects’
Boys’ Writing Project
This innovative writing project encourages boys in the exploration of writing and Oracy through the practical manufacture of strange and wonderful objects. The project helps raise attainment in writing; it also sparks progression in personal development, Oracy, audience awareness, and celebrates the unique methods of learning in each individual. Through the initiative, boys see writing ‘in action’. It is revealed through their work not as a passive, supine activity but a purposeful, enjoyable and essential tool to negotiate and understand their universe.
The Project can be seen in two complementary stages:
1. OBJECT AND STORY MAKING
Through role-play and storytelling exercises the boys begin to create unique stories. Understanding that these stories have not reached the writing stage and are still alive with possibilities, they design, revise and finally manufacture objects that will stimulate the stories that they have already conceived. Writing in journals and activity logs takes place throughout this stage of the process. Both objects and stories then develop through practice and revision until they are ready to be exhibited.
The outcomes generated through this stage of the process include:
- Teamwork and negotiation skills.
- Design for purpose.
- Gathering materials and work scheduling.
- Manufacturing skills.
- The exercising of aesthetic and divergent thinking.
- Recognition of narrative structures and language patterns.
- Recognition of motive and cause.
- Critical analysis skills.
- Writing for different purposes in their log books e.g. recording, annotating, reflective, factual, and story.
2. PUBLIC VOICE IN THE EXHIBITION
The next stage in the process requires the children to be organisers, curators, and experts in the exhibition. All exhibits will be annotated with histories and explanations of purpose. The boys give lectures on the stories hidden in the objects, followed by the stories themselves told orally.
Outcomes generated by this stage of the process include:
- Organisational and design skills.
- The experience and exercise of the public voice.
- Audience awareness.
- Animating objects.
- Writing displaying direct communication, ownership and originality.