Writing At St Joseph's

How we teach students to write at St Joseph’s

At St Joseph’s, we are proudly recognised as a progressive school based on the ‘Science of Learning’ in the education sector. The Science of Learning draws on research from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and education to understand the processes through which we learn.

In 2020 and again in 2024, I had the privilege of leading the staff professional development to improve students' writing skills through “The Writing Revolution" also called the Hochman method, which I have studied and undertaken courses on.

The Writing Revolution methodology rests on explicit, carefully sequenced instruction, building from sentences to compositions. The Hochman Method is not a separate writing curriculum but rather an approach designed to be adapted to and embedded in the content taught in any subject area and grade level.

Writing can be challenging because it is a highly complex skill involving many sub-skills. Students have to figure out what to say: what is the point they are trying to make or the story they are trying to tell? What is the best way to organise their ideas and structure their piece? What are the big ideas and conclusions they want to get across? What kind of supporting evidence or details are needed? In addition, students have to figure out what to say: what is the point they are trying to make or the story they are trying to tell? What is the best way to organise their ideas and structure their piece? What are the big ideas and conclusions they want to get across? What kind of supporting evidence or details are needed? Then, students must apply many foundational writing skills, from the motor skills involved with keyboarding or handwriting to decisions about word choice, syntax, and grammar. All of these writing processes are happening simultaneously, adding to the overall cognitive load of the task.

Cognitive overload is a state that can occur during learning in which students struggle to process and store new information in memory. ‘The Writing Revolution’ ensures students don’t experience cognitive overload and that optimum learning is achieved through explicit sequential instruction. Sentence construction is used as the building blocks in the writing process. The lessons are embedded into the content of the curriculum, as well as grammar and syntax.

Through ‘The Writing Revolution’, the following content and skills are explicitly taught from prep to Year 6 at St Joseph’s Malvern:

• Sentence structure, including simple, compound, and complex sentences
• Subordinate and independent clauses
• Sentence types (statement, command, question, and exclamatory)
• Conjunctions including subordinating conjunctions, appositives, and sentence combining
• Expanding sentences using adverbial, adjectival, and prepositional phrases
• Vocabulary building
• Constructing paragraphs with a topic sentence with relevant supporting details
• Planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing various text types and genres.

I have included some examples of the writing teaching slides, constructed by our excellent teachers, from Prep to Year Six.

If you have any further questions regarding our writing process at St Joseph’s, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Amanda Jackson

Literacy Leader