NET Scheme News 2024 Summer issue 46

The ultimate goal of this project was to equip students with independent writing skills and to see our students go beyond the original text’s framework. We wanted students to apply what they had learnt in their own writing, independently. The impact was demonstrated by analysing the growth students had made between a pre-unit ‘cold task’ and post- unit ‘hot task’. This independent writing represented the culmination of the students’ learning journey. Here, after all the internalisation of language and experimenting with writing styles, students had the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding and mastery of the writing process. We were excited to share the evidence of this growth, tracked across units, to a full-house of teachers during our cluster meeting hosted at the NET Section Office in May 2024. Our students are making dramatic progress and there are clear changes in their writing in terms of number of words, ideas, use of key connectives, range of vocabulary and inclusion of literary devices. For example, last year before S2W was implemented, our students barely organised their writing in paragraphs or structured them with key connectives, but now this is seen in almost every piece of their writing, along with a greater range and complexity of language. In our most recent narrative unit, ‘The Papaya That Spoke’, the text was designed to develop the use of dialogue through powerful speech verbs and stage directions. Before this unit, “said” was the only speech verb our students could use and ‘stage directions’ were not found in students’ work. Now, our students have not only internalised a variety of speech verbs and ‘stage directions’, but they can naturally apply these when writing different stories, creating their own unique texts confidently and with creativity. It is highly encouraging to see that students are able to transfer the writing skills and knowledge they have mastered in different contexts. Teachers increasingly see many examples of the more sophisticated language from S2W units appearing naturally in GE and assessment tasks.This effect does not only last for a short period of time, but it is continuously happening and accumulating, showing how new language is being added to children’s repertoire. Teachers feel energised by this evidence that the approach is really working. Looking forward, next year we will be expanding the number of units in P4 and P5, and extending the project into P6. Having implemented our first non- fiction text this year, we will continue to develop units using a range of text types. It will be another interesting and exciting planning, learning and teaching journey for both our students and teachers. Natalie Shin, EPC PLK Tin Ka Ping Millennium Primary School The S2W “Seed” project was an interesting process as a teacher,but was a particularly satisfying one thanks to the high level engagement alongside swift development of students’ confidence. Tony Ryan, NET Christian Pui Yan Primary School S2W is an approach that is enjoyable for both students and teachers. The growth we observed in students’ writing ability exceeded our expectations, and the skills learned through this approach have even been seen to have been independently applied to other areas of their work, such as in their GE lessons. The experience has left us excited to develop the next S2W unit and see our students' confidence and ability in writing develop even further. Mitch Robinson, NET, and Katherine Cheng, EPC SKH Tsing Yi Chu Yan Primary School 24 The GE writing task showing the transference of skills into new writing tasks — use of dialogue shown in red, key connectives in blue and other literary devices in yellow The Impact of the S2W “Seed” Project Collaborative Project NET Scheme News Issue 46