ABSTRACT
Children's writing, under the banner of the 'creative' writing movement, was being taken seriously and it is possible to see The Excitement of Writing as a definitive statement of its new position. The nine schools which took part in the investigations varied widely in geographical location, size, age and in the catchment areas they served. Fifty teachers in them collaborated with the group in devising situations for writing, offering information on their procedures, allowing observers into their classrooms and making available a mass of information derived from their knowledge of the pupils involved. The children provided four pieces of writing in each of the six terms to a pattern that would permit inter-class and inter-school comparisons without asking for major changes in the way that writing was normally undertaken. The shape of the writing programme was not arrived at without some false starts. Attempts to collect all the writing produced on one or several days proved unsatisfactory.
