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For two years we have been working together on an evolving scheme of practice modelled on my own continually developing methodology as a professional writer. Original Creative Practice aims to inspire courage, authenticity and free-flowing expression through the written word. This morning, they take a few moments to write in preparation for a field trip. We choose an "anchor" phrase, "I am a writer and today...". They know the score. They use these words to kick off the writing and keep it going whenever it threatens to dry up. The imperative is to write without stopping. Silence descends. The teachers are engrossed, too. If anyone pauses, I remind them: "Keep writing."

The writer's notebooks are decidedly not exercise books. They have bright covers, they are never scrutinised or marked, and in here the emerging writer is encouraged to liberate whatever voice wants to speak, experiment and play. In order to keep writing, they can abandon all concern for correct spelling and punctuation, make no corrections, avoid crossing out. There is an invitation to write nonsense, and if it happens to make sense, then that'll do just as well. Trust that intuition.

After 15 minutes, the children are invited to share a fragment of what they've written. Kai is keen to read and, whereas two years ago he would write not a word, now he has covered the page in a stream of phrases that skip and rhyme and sing to his mum then turn into peas.

Then we pack our bags and head for the National Gallery. On the bus, the children observe and write or sketch. In the gallery, we "free write" some more in front of European art from the last six centuries. We decide on the anchor phrase "It is dusk and..." in front of Turner's The Fighting Temeraire, and closely observe "What I see is..." to get a handle on what is happening in Joseph Wright's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump.