Around 60 teachers from Auckland Normal Intermediate, Cornwall Park District, Kohia Terrace and Maungawhau schools joined in on a series of workshops focussing on different aspects of writing. These included sessions on transitions from Primary to Intermediate and Intermediate to Secondary, Linking oral Language and ESOL and extending your ' writer's toolbox' for teaching.
We were lucky enough to have two facilitators from Tools4Teachers, Charlene Mataio and Jane Van der Zeyden, join us for the afternoon. Both made strong cases for the vital role of oral language for supporting and extending both our English language learners, and all other learners, to become better writers.
What do teachers need to know about quality writing ?
- What constitutes quality in writing ?
- What is involved in producing various kinds of writing?
- What is the relative effectiveness of various methods of teaching writing?
Jane encouraged us to remember the importance of BICs vs. CALPs.
BICs - Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills - which is the language we need to get by in the playground....as opposed to ...
CALPs - Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency- which are the 800 words needed to participate at an academic level within our school system.
Also joining us were Bryce Mills, DP @ ANI and Preetika Krishnan from EGGS. Both ran workshops focussing on what is expected with writing/ literacy when making the transitions from one level of school to the one above. An invaluable opportunity for discussion across schools - so a big thank you to both of them for their input into today's event.
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