19 June 2025

I hope you are all enjoying the rhythm of Term 2 and of course another short(er) week due to Matariki/Puanga celebrations.

This week I wanted to hone in on literacy, particularly boys and their writing! 

There has been a lot of chat about the new refreshed national curriculum in the media - especially with the English and Maths. We see very little difference in maths and reading between gender but certainly this is not the case for writing development.

We know from research both here in Aotearoa and internationally that boys, on average, often show lower literacy outcomes than girls, particularly in writing. One reason may be that boys can sometimes take a little longer to develop fine motor control or language processing skills—both of which are central to transcription. If the physical act of writing feels difficult or frustrating, it can get in the way of expressing ideas, even when a child has plenty to say.

Over the last few years we have implemented a variety of things to try and improve writing achievement for some of our boys. Each year we have had specific targets and teachers have delved into a range of Professional Learning. This has included:

• Create a classroom environment where students love to write and feel safe to express themselves - Building a Joyful Literary Culture.

• Read and celebrate quality children's literature to inspire student writing.

• Developing the Worser Bay School Zine in the aim to increase engagement.

• Use helping circles to provide guided, small-group support.

• Learn and implement active demonstration (modelling writing in front of students).

• Introduce 1-minute feedback to give quick, targeted responses that lift writing.

• BSLA - Structured Literacy Approach - University of Canterbury.

• Set writing goals with students to develop ownership and track progress.

• Understand how transcription skills free up cognitive space for idea development.

• Learn how to assess and track transcription progress.

• Use embedded, short-burst lessons to teach spelling patterns, sentence construction, and punctuation in context.

• Continue to refine demonstration, feedback, and conferencing practices.

• Deepening Practice – Strengthening Transcription Skills.

You will see this focus on transcription skills appearing further down this lists in more recent times. It’s not that it hasn’t been there -  it’s upped the anti in the new curriculum and this is where a lot of the more recent focus in New Zealand has been placed. 

So What Are Transcription Skills?

Transcription is a vital part of writing. It includes such things as:

• handwriting and letter formation

• spelling and sentence structure

• punctuation and layout.

These are the building blocks of writing fluency—and for many learners, especially boys, developing confidence in this area can be a key stepping stone to becoming a capable, motivated writer.

By really shining a spotlight on transcription as part of our wider literacy strategy we are not wanting to do away with any of the richness and experiences. It’s definitely a both/and approach. 

We have increased the amount of time we spend on targeted handwriting practice and are aware of the overuse of technology.

Spelling and vocabulary has been under scrutiny.

Ensuring that writing goals are in bite sized chunks - micro goals - so children can work on something specific and manageable before they focus on the next goals. The trick here is timeframe - we can’t be working on a capital letter in the middle of a sentence for a whole year for example!!

We’re also choosing texts and topics that reflect our learners’ interests—because when children care about what they’re writing, they're more motivated to put in the effort.

I’m sure you would have chatted about writing at your recent progress meetings, but if you would like more ideas of how to reinforce learning at school, at home, please contact your child’s teacher for tips and ideas suited to their needs. 

Our target this year was: 

We are already seeing signs of good progress in 2025 - and we look forward to sharing the annual achievement progress at the end of the year. I am confident we will have some celebrations to hold!

“You can make anything by writing” C.S. Lewis