Effective+practices+in+teaching+writing

This workshop goes through some evidence based practices that have been shown through research to be effective in improving student outcomes in writing. The research work has been published by NZATE in the resource //Effective Practices for Teaching Writing// which was launched at the IFTE conference in the week of 18-21 April, 2011.

The workshop and resource include 2.5 hours of footage of 4 teachers at work with their classes - ranging from Yr 9 - 12 - at several different points in the writing programme of each teacher throughout the year. The DVD has two different pathways in which you can view the teachers at work in their classrooms. Firstly, you can view by school - about 35mins of footage from each class at several different points during their writing programme. Secondly, you can view some short clips from across the classes that exemplify some aspect of each of the seven effective practices that the resource is based around.

Here is what the cover of the book and DVD look like:




 * The seven effective practices outlined in the resource and in the DVD are:**

(1) Clearly describe the learning intentions and success criteria (2) Encourage students to collaborate with peers in the pro­duction of texts (3) Allow for indi­vidual, goal-directed work and inquiry (4) Make connec­tions across and between texts, text types, content, and students’ own lives (5) Emphasize that writing is a process (6) Involve students in using strategies and processes used to create effective pieces of writing (7) Give specific feedback and feed forward to provide clear guidance on next steps to improve

Here are some excerpts from the written resource which give you a 'flavour' of what it is about. Hopefully it 'looks' like it should - but in doing this conversion some of the fonts and layout seem to have changed i.e. the 'f' letter and words in italics have all changed and some words are missing - not sure how that happens with a pdf!



I am also going to have the dubious honour of having my presentation filmed so I can have the horrible experience of seeing myself on screen - not a pretty prospect! If it turns out to be not too hideous I may upload it here or a bit of it - but not too hopeful.

In the meantime I am putting up some short extracts from the video here so you can all get an idea of the great work these teachers have done! Lynda's Intro to Poetry [|Effective Practices Extract # 1] Daniel's Class Journal Writing Extract [|Effective Practices Extract # 2] Jess's Year 11 Creative Writing Intro [|Effective Practices Extract # 3] Year 11 Students talk about portfolio approach [|Effective Practices Extract # 4]

Here are the links to three excerpts from the filming of the workshop. The quality is OK but not terrific and the angle from which the filming occurred means it is a bit hard to read the Power point slides so looking at the Power point presentation below will be necessary to really get a feel of things. Anyway here are the links: First one []
 * WORKSHOP PRESENTATION**

Second one []

Third one []

Here's a slightly adapted Power point presentation with the main ideas and thinking behind the effective practices in the resource

Here is an earlier version in pdf form that has basically all the same slides but not quite all the same

My contact email is: seanhawthorne@me.com if you have any queries or would like to give me feedback on the resource and the workshop.