The Inklings.

What do the authors of “The Lord Of The Rings”, “The Hobbit” and “The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe” have in common? They share a location (Oxford), a friendship and a membership of a famous group known as “The Inklings.” Made of many other famous authors, this was a group that met every Tuesday to discuss their unfinished works. Before modern academic research into the teaching of writing, before well-documented case studies of the value of articulating your prose before you write it, these giants of literature thought it was fun to talk ideas.

Grade 4, 5 & 6 thought “they” (The Inklings) might be on to something and regularly take the chance to discuss ideas. We call it many things, “pair-sharing”, “conferencing” and “thinking out loud.” Recently, we had the chance to discuss our writing thus far in this unit-we broke off into groups to do this more effectively. We told our partners our thoughts and ideas and they responded. They liked this concept but had a question about this facet-they thought we said that really well but that “this” needed further thought. In discussing our plans for words in print, we refined our notions and ideas of what we wanted to say, we received feedback as to the quality of both and we framed our sentences in our minds so that they came more easily when we were faced with a blank page waiting for action; the real challenge for all writers! Sometimes, it’s good to talk in class!