“It’s going to be tricky for teachers to hold back from marking, but this exercise is all about learning to write for the joy of it. “You can write about whatever you like, design your own games, you can write your own story, you can write your own jokes, you can draw your pictures and draw a map - and the teacher can’t mark it. One of her main aims as laureate over the next two years is to get teachers to allow pupils to have a Free Writing Friday, just as Miss Mellows once did, which would consist of 15 minutes’ free-writing time every week, on a Friday, without it being marked. They’re too worried about making mistakes or that their handwriting isn’t neat enough, she says, while teachers are too inhibited by all the boxes they have to tick, and are leaving the profession as a result. It’s perhaps no surprise that the new children’s laureate is concerned that today children are not doing enough creative writing in schools. That’s where I discovered my joy of writing.” Not enough creative writing in schools “And there was another teacher called Miss Mellows who allowed us to do free writing every Friday. Going back to the late Seventies, at St Paul’s Girls’ School in west London, she recalls how “Miss McDonald just told us one day to go and write about what it might be like to be a Viking.” It’s safe to say they are adored by children across the world. The How to Train Your Dragon books have also been turned into hugely-successful computer-animated films by American film giant DreamWorks, and have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. In-depth: Disadvantaged pupils miss out on author visits Read: How the Tes English Team of the Year brings books to life Read: New laureate ‘deeply sad’ teachers are leaving the job Decades later she would publish best-selling story books for children about Vikings - namely the Hairy Hooligan tribe on the island of Berk who are terrorised by dragons, but later learn to fly on them thanks to a boy called Hiccup who befriends a dragon. “Normally I couldn’t get homework in on time, but I did this time.” You might say part of Cressida Cowell’s success is down to her history teacher, Miss McDonald, who told her aged 12 to go away and write a story about Vikings.
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