I've had a quick look at the new writing framework. Here are my first observations.
1. Don't come to this document for inspiration, excitement or fun. The theme that is repeated over and over again is that writing is hard and can't be done in a joyful way.
2. There is a strong element in the document that writing comes about through building blocks. To be fair, it's not the only element in the document but it's the one that's easiest to get hold of, and, I suggest, the one most seductive for a particular mechanical way of teaching and running a writing curriculum.
3. Only one kind of writing seems to be being discussed: extended prose written in standard English . This is a misrepresentation of what writing is. Here are some examples of writing that is not always extended prose: poetry, song lyrics, film scripts, play scripts, dialogue in novels, ads on billboards, the scripts for ads we see on TV, notes on power points, lists, notes for speeches that we might give, a lot of rules, instructions, directions that are written up in public places, a good deal of writing in the digital sphere (texts, chat room chat, comments threads, posts on social media etc).
It's worth remembering that a lot of this is the daily language of the modern world and being good at it, is a highly commercial skill to have! You could argue that by schools not helping children write in these ways, we are depriving them of marketability!
4. There is a sad irony that a document on writing hardly talks about how we might convey feelings, tension, excitement, lyricism, horror, fear, intrigue etc etc in writing. It's as if learning how to write is an exercise in being correct (or becoming more and more correct).
5. Don't come to this document looking for ways in which reading exciting and engrossing books is the best platform for talk and writing. Don't come to it looking for a raft of exciting ways in which we can use what's in great books, as triggers for children to express ideas and feelings triggered by what they read.
6. I spotted two inaccuracies: 'All writing is ultimately made up of sentences'. This is an ignorant and silly thing to say. There are 100s of different ways of not writing in sentences. Shakespeare was brilliant at it. Stand on any station and look at the ads. Look at any film script. Go on the internet and look at song lyrics. Go through the collected works of many poets.
The second inaccuracy is about 'adverbials'. You'll find this in the glossary. As people will know from what I've written elsewhere, the obsession with 'adverbials' is absurd. It isolates one tiny feature of 'stylistics' and magnifies it to the detriment of many other stylistic features which would help children write. It seems that the people who've written this document have never come across a book about stylistics. That's possible!
Even so, the last 15 years has seen an obsession with adverbials. What are they? They are adverbs, adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses. In this document, for some mysterious reason, they don't include adverbial clauses. So, to recap, here are three sentences using fronted adverbials. The first one uses a fronted adverb. The second one uses a fronted adverbial phrase. The third one uses a fronted adverbial clause.
Luckily, I found my pen.
With a smile on my face, I left the room.
When it's hot, I take my jacket off.
In short, the very same people who obsessively peddle this stuff don't even know their own 'grammar'. You can find the same mistakes on the 'expected levels' examples on gov.uk where someone has called an adverbial phrase a subordinate clause. The truth of the matter is, the people who write this stuff, demand high levels of correctness from children but find it so difficult themselves, they keep getting it wrong themselves.
