Literacy News

How does our teaching support our students in NAPLAN (Writing)? 

Here at EPS, we place a strong emphasis on providing a thorough approach when it comes to developing writers. Traditionally, the teaching of writing has focused heavily on the secretarial elements of writing, like sentence structure, punctuation and grammar. Also, how to organise a text.  We focus on not just the secretarial elements of writing, but also the authorial. Our goal is to equip students with the tools they need to become effective and engaged writers, which includes the students having lots of opportunities to have authentic and meaningful writing experiences. 

The teaching of writing is structured around what is mandated in the Victorian Curriculum and the framework developed by Ruth Culham; The 6+1 traits. This framework encompasses all the key aspects of effective writing; ideas, sentence fluency, conventions, word choice, voice, text organisation and presentation. We make sure that the students are able to explore these elements whilst thinking about the purpose of their writing and who the audience is. Using the Writer’s Notebook (Amiee Buckner, Ralph Fletcher), develops our students' ability to gather seeds and generate ideas from their own lives. The students are encouraged to use their writer’s notebook as often as possible when they are inspired by the world around them. We focus on understanding one of the two of the traits at a time, allowing the teachers to deeply explore with the students through the use of multiple mentor texts. 

So, it is lucky that the way that NAPLAN is assessed aligns enough with the 6+1 Traits that we can both ensure our students' success in standardised testing, and development as writers.  See below the Assessment Criteria for NAPLAN Narrative: 

This scale shows the weight of, and marks given for each area

How the 6+1 Traits and the NAPLAN criteria align: 

Reach out if you have any questions, 

Yours in Writing, 

Grace Smith-Davies (Literacy Leader)