NAPLAN results for 2022 have shown an increase in writing for Year 5, 7 and 9 after a decade of decline, yet an expert said students' writing results have been plateauing since 2011. “ACARA’s report on the 2022 NAPLAN results ...
More »Are all teachers secretly writers? Opinion
If you look up the biographies of authors, you will find that many are also teachers, or ex-teachers — Rachael Johns, Josephine Moon and John Marsden, to name a few. While mingling at a writers' retreat and meeting fellow authors, ...
More »Schools drop writing focus too early: researchers
Schools are dropping the focus on writing too soon, say academics. Writing for The Conversation, Australian Catholic University Professor of Educational Assessment and Literacy Claire Wyatt-Smith and senior research officer Christine Jennifer Jackson surveyed more than 4,000 primary and secondary school ...
More »‘This is how you write about it’: The school program that transformed boys’ writing skills
It’s been an unhelpful stereotype for decades now: girls excel in English and other language-orientated subjects, while boys more easily grasp the concepts of maths and the sciences. I saw this kind of gendered determinism played out not only as ...
More »Raising writing skills for Australian students
Student writing skills have declined by nearly 24 points since 2011, according to the latest NAPLAN results data released in early September. Only 79.5 per cent of Year 9 students met the minimum writing standards in the 2018 literacy test, ...
More »Early NAPLAN marks released amid terse trans-Pacific debate
Schools now have their hands on early NAPLAN data, a day after two US professors called for the marks to be discarded, and questioned the futility of comparisons with previous years. ACARA today released the NAPLAN 2018 summary information, which ...
More »New HSC English syllabus gives teachers the shakes(peare)
It may be the HSC’s 50th birthday, but not everyone's celebrating. An English module called 'the craft of writing' will soon be mandatory for all year 12 students. In this back-to-basics approach, spelling, grammar and vocabulary are emphasised. On the flipside, context ...
More »In schools, the write kind of wrong flourishes
Australia is "dropping the ball" in teaching writing skills to primary students, a literacy expert has claimed. Dr Noella Mackenzie from CSU’s school of education said keyboarding skills, too, have been neglected by the education system, leaving children academically disadvantaged. ...
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