Writing Together 2003/4

Writing Lifestories

by Kris Siefken

For my workshop on 'writing lifestories', with Year 6 at Lee Manor Primary School in Lewisham, the class were set the preparatory task of observing the world around them and thinking about how things are different now to how they were 100 years ago. Trying to reflect the class's diverse interests I sourced as many different examples of autobiographies as possible to show during the workshop: reflecting the wide range of people who write autobiographies.

The workshop began with a brief question session on "What is an autobiography?". We then discussed the differences between biographies and autobiographies; the children's suggestions expanded on the board - first person account, personal observations, the presence of emotions and feelings. We also discussed lifestories as recipes for people; what key ingredients or facts must we include - and how extra ingredients and facts can add flavour and themes to an autobiography. This exercise was reinforced by reading the opening of my own autobiography and asking the children to identify possible themes.

I was keen to get across the notion of autobiographies as personal histories which teach us not just about a life but also about a time and place in history. No book is written in a vacuum and no person grows up in one, so lifestories, and autobiographies in particular, can be tremendous historical and socio-historical resources (Anne Frank's Diaries, Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land).

This idea was illustrated using a first person memoir of school life in 1953. With no information about its date the class examined the extract and tried to identify its time by answering questions and examining the text (segregated playgrounds, outside toilets open to the sky, milk at break). Date suggestions ranged from 1830 to 1970. They were then told the date and asked how it could have been made more time-specific and how they could rewrite it to help the reader.

I then read examples of childhood autobiographies to show how lifestories can be time-specific without giving dates and how emotions and feelings aid this process. (Charles [Charlie] Chaplin, My Early Years - childhood in 1895 London; and first person extracts from both A Child's War edited by Kati David and Children in War edited by David Childs).

After a discussion about where we could get information to aid time-specific writing (libraries, reference books, internet and people) the children drew up a list of things they regularly used that hadn't existed when Chaplin was writing. This, in turn, set up writing their own 'My Early Years', utilising emotions, memories and things from the list.

Enthusiastic to use these ideas, this exercise produced some great writing from the class; from pieces literally crammed with cultural references to emotive pieces about their schooldays. However, the most extraordinary piece of writing came from John. Recently arrived from Sierra Leone and still catching up the class in English, he wrote a devastatingly frank account of Sierra Leone's civil war: 'When the rebel come inside the city they burn houses and they kill people and they burn cars and they burn the one old city. This things that I have write is a long time, is about 3 years now and you can see people that were dead. I felt so bad.' John had never talked or written about Sierra Leone before.

A second writing exercise, asking them to write their autobiographies as though they were 30, allowed the children to combine everything we had looked at. This also produced some great writing, although, running the workshop again I would provide a handout 'key sheet' of ideas to think about, summarising all the areas covered. Given the range of topics covered, some children inevitably focused on those areas they had personally found particularly useful. With a key sheet they would have been stimulated to draw in more areas at the same time. This exercise produced some great autobiography openings, from Esme's 'When I look back I think there is someone who put me here' to my personal favourite, Leah's 'As an art teacher I get a lot of stick'.

Both I, and the school, found the workshop to be extremely successful and very productive, with all the children on task for the session and enthusiastically producing very good pieces of work.

However, on a cautionary note, I would say that the use of autobiographies specifically about childhood is key to getting the children to internalise the ideas discussed: they see someone they can identify with and accept and understand the idea more easily. Similarly, the creative aspect of writing their autobiographies and 'early life' passages works best when they can see how other 'children' have approached the task.

As a writer, working with the class also proved personally invaluable, inspiring a new sequence of 'school days' poems and also tightening my autobiography's opening - after all, a ten-year-old child's attention span is the best literary critic there is.

Please note This information was originally provided as part of the 2002 Writing Together programme. Materials for 2004 are currently in preparation and will be available on this web site when they are published.