The Writing Revolution is revolutionising how educators teach students
The Writing Revolution is at the centre of teaching students in Catholic Education Tasmania schools how to write. Students across Tasmania have some of the lowest literacy rates in the country, and as part of Literate Learners for Life, CET aims to tackle these issues to ensure that there is an equal opportunity for all students to learn.
In essence, the Writing Revolution framework tells us how to write. It goes back to the basics of sentence structure and has a focus on revising and circling back to previous teaching, to ensure that students have a firm grasp of the content they have learned previously. Students will have already built an understanding of the structure of sentences from earlier lessons, so they will be able to see immediate success when completing work due to their prior knowledge. The framework believes that sentences are the building blocks of all writing, and that grammar is best taught in the context of student writing. Literacy support for Prep - Year Two students has used a suite of resources from MulitLit, while the Writing Revolution targets all students, across all year levels.
CET’s Lisa Fenning, the Lead Advisor: Literacy, explained how important writing instruction is for teaching students how to write effectively. “Writing instruction cannot be facilitated effectively without subject area content and knowledge. This makes our writing instruction reliant on every learning area content.” Said Lisa, “CET’s focus on a knowledge rich curriculum, will further enhance our teaching and writing instruction for our students and educators.”
Literacy Practice Leader, Emma Marshall at St Anthony’s Catholic School in Riverside, discussed how the Writing Revolution supports the educators in her school. “The Writing Revolution tells us how to teach writing. It goes back to the sentence structure and the basics of how to write.” Says Emma, “The best thing is that students don’t need total mastery in some Literacy areas before moving into a different area, because you are constantly revising, and reviewing the previously taught strategies.” Emma explained that a single lesson can cater for a variety of levels of literacy, and students understand what’s happening in every lesson, so they can delve deeper into their understanding of how to write.
Within a secondary context, St Virgil’s College has been working in their middle-school to improve the literacy skill set of their Year 7 and Year 8 students. Literacy is a focus that is integral to all subject areas, and considering high schools have subject specific educators teaching in their chosen field, it was important to St Virgil’s Literacy Practice Leader, Olivia Auksouris that there was a buy-in from all subject teacher’s curriculum wide. “It’s been really good at the College because we’ve had buy-in from all of the other departments to try and make sure that our students know that literacy isn’t just an English subject.”
Olivia admits that the Writing Revolution challenged her thinking, and she has changed her teaching pedagogy and the way that she teaches literacy. She has seen the benefits firsthand, with students who required Literacy interventions towards the end of last year, making drastic improvements to their reading. They are now reading at a functional level, engaging with the world around them. “To know that in such a short amount of time, through explicit teaching, that a student could make such drastic improvements to their life is so exciting.”
Both Emma and Olivia mentioned how great it will be having all students across the entire CET system being trained in the same style of teaching. It will help fill gaps in their knowledge and their understanding of how best to write sentences. Emma explained her own perspective as a parent and as a Literacy Practice Leader. “My son, he’s just started in Kindergarten. I am so thankful that he is starting this year because he will get PreLit, InitiaLit then he’ll get the Writing Revolution, then the Spelling Mastery. It is that continual learning, and quality, consistent learning with the same language all the way through his schooling.”
The Writing Revolution will continue to influence the students of Tasmania across all year levels. Improving Literacy levels remains one of the biggest challenges that educators face state-wide, and through the Literate Learners for Life initiative, CET’s students will achieve successes in the classroom on an everyday basis.
