Murwillumbah Public School

Key features

Improving student engagement in writing through partnerships with authors.

Background

Murwillumbah Public School was one of eleven schools that participated in the Authors in Priority Schools project during 2007. The school invited Nette Hilton, a multi-award winning writer of children’s and adult books, to be their writer in residence for the duration of the Authors in Priority School project. The school arranged a meeting with the author to develop an action plan, detailing the project outcomes, target group, implementation strategies, timeline, budget and data collection.

The project highlighted the effectiveness of connecting classroom literacy activities to real life situations. The students addressed their actual experiences within the writing context and recognised the purpose and audience for writing beyond the classroom.

Project outcomes

The overall outcomes of the project were to:

• have a positive impact on students’ attitudes and engagement in reading, writing and visual literacy
• provide professional learning for teachers to maximise the impact of the author workshops
• foster collaboration and build links between schools and their communities.

The planned outcomes for the students were to:

• understand the text type of narrative
• understand that books need to be planned to match text and illustrations
• employ strategies to solve problems when writing
• use different strategies for rewriting drafts
• use a story board

Implementation

Before the workshops began, the school located some of the author’s books in their library and set up a display for the students and parents to visit.

The project involved the author in presenting nine reading and writing workshops with students in Years five and six.

The author began the workshops by talking about her own real life experiences as the basis for her writings. Students were encouraged to take a similar approach in their narrative writings. Through the use of storyboards, the students developed draft narratives and utilised a variety of strategies modelled by the author to rewrite these.

The author’s explicit teaching style and engaging personality facilitated the engagement of the students in the writing tasks, even those students who were experiencing difficulties with literacy tasks. Teachers provided advice and support to the author workshops throughout and in between the workshops.

By the end of the program the students had created eight page picture books and chapter books for younger readers.

The students proudly displayed their published stories at a special assembly.
A display of the students’ published work was assembled in the library. Their work was enthusiastically read by students and parents.

Students were extremely proud of their achievements.

The display provided an audience for the students’ work and promoted the students’ understanding of the connection between the classroom and situations outside the classroom.

While the focus of the project was on improving student learning, teacher professional learning and parent and community participation were equally important parts of the program. Through participation in the workshops with the author, the teachers examined different approaches to the teaching of writing including providing more opportunities for student self direction and explicit teaching of the text structure.

(The) staff felt that they were given good ideas. (Teacher)

Parents were invited to attend the sessions and to meet the author at a special morning tea. They viewed and listened to the students’ stories. The project enhanced parent knowledge of the writing process.

Overall, the project has been a great success with tangible improvement in interest, engagement and writing skills of  students. (Teacher)

Future directions

Planned follow-up activities include:

• the employment of a specialist teacher through Priority Schools Programs supplementary staffing to continue the work started with the author
• a focus on language structure and grammar
• incorporating the author’s work into whole school library programs
• embedding the skills in the school’s literacy scope and sequence charts, using similar formats as those used by the author.

The project demonstrated the effective use of visiting authors in engaging students in the writing process. The importance of developing a clear and purposeful plan, related to the project outcomes and developed by both teachers and the author, was integral to the success of the project. By the author reading their own texts, students developed understanding of writing for a variety of purposes and audience using real-life experiences.
Teachers, parents and the author agreed that the students’ attitudes towards, and engagement in, writing improved as a result of their participation in the project. This improved engagement in their learning increased interest in other areas of literacy, including reading.

Further information

Therese Weir
Coordinator PSP, Equity Literacy Initiatives
(02) 9244 5258