ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which the context of children’s writing shapes their relationship with their work. Its starting point is the seminal work of Clark (1976), who asked, ‘What can we learn from young fluent home readers?’ and the suggestion is that we should similarly ask, ‘What we can learn from young people who “home” write?’ Despite the burgeoning number of creative writing websites, the increasing demand for young writers’ groups and the unprecedented success of national writing competitions such as, in the UK, BBC Radio 2’s ‘500 Words’, home writing is still the poor relation of home reading and there is little qualitative research examining how students experience and engage with writing outside of school.
