NET Scheme News 2024 Summer issue 46

The desire to support our students to express themselves more confidently and communicate their ideas in meaningful contexts led us to join the Speaking toWriting (S2W)“Seed”project. The project aims to enhance students' writing skills through the process of internalising texts and language orally. We have implemented the project over two years, involving teachers from P4 and P5 year levels. Teachers have received planning and classroom support from the Advisory Teaching Team of the NET Section, along with professional development, advice and feedback on observed lessons from literacy experts and Talk4Writing trainers from DSF Australia. This has had a powerful impact on our theoretical and practical understanding of how writing can be taught. Our initial units focused on the narrative text type. Built into the language of each text was a different focus intended tomove students’writing forward.Our first P4 unit,‘Little Charlie’, focused on the description of characters. This was followed by ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, which targeted the rich description of settings. The following year, we added ‘The Magic Porridge Pot’ to P4 units, where students targeted incorporating elements of suspense into their writing. When the students moved into P5,‘The Papaya That Spoke’ provided opportunities for developing the use of dialogue in narrative texts. Here we can see the students practising a new innovated version of the story: The Papaya That Spoke — Class Innovation Finally, in our most recent unit we tackled a non- fiction text titled ‘The Manchester Ridgeback’ where students worked on an information text focusing on the use of generalisers. Internalising a non-fiction text One of my favourite parts of planning and teaching lessons has been our students’ reactions to our creative hooks. These moments are designed to engage children playfully from the very start of any unit. These have ranged from an outdoor crime scene discovery to a mysterious dragon’s egg delivery! For both students and teachers, it has been a wonderful journey so far, and we are excited to continue next year. Lee Gladrey, NET PLK Tin Ka Ping Millennium Primary School References Renwick, C. (2010) Learn-it-Say-it-Write-it – Raising Achievement in EAL Writing: An Evaluative Study of the ‘Storytelling into Writing’ Approach. Retrieved on 6/10/21 from https://www.talk4writing.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Learn-it-Say-it-Write-it-For-web.pdf Corbett, P. & Strong, J. (2018) Creating Storytellers and Writers: For 5-12 Year-Olds. Talk4Writing, UK. Geary, D. (2008) An Evolutionarily Informed Education Science. Educational Psychologist , 43 (4), 179-195. Boxing up the text Story map for ‘The Magic Porridge Pot’ A mystery package 21st Century Conferece Designing Tailor-made Units An example of a student practising a story map at home to share with classmates 23 NET Scheme News Issue 46