On 23 – 25 May, GCC Primary had Writing Consultant Ann Korab run professional development workshops with the Primary teaching staff. This professional development consisted of an afternoon workshop with all Primary teachers and three full-day workshops with Year levels 1, 4 and 6.
Ann Korab is a highly experienced consultant who specialises in Narrative and Persuasive Writing using the 6+1 Writing Traits and a Seven Steps for Writing approach. These professional development workshops were highly engaging and had a hands-on approach where teachers were able to watch Ann in action modelling lessons in the classroom. There was a large focus on developing student autonomy in their writing and providing students with the skills to develop voice, rich vocabulary, structure and entertainment in their writing. By participating in these workshops, our Primary teachers have been able to refine their writing teaching skills and implement new and innovative ways to engage students in their learning.
A Year 1 Teacher remarks:
The students are feeling really empowered to put down their wonderful ideas into their writing. In 1W, we now each have writing partners to help us with our ideas and story development. We have also started to learn what it means to do ‘surgery’ on our own writing, going back over our work and adding in character, feelings, thoughts and movement. We’ve learnt the importance of using the tricky words we know and using all of the phonics we have been learning so that we are able to read back our work to ourselves or our partner. – Jeanette Roach
At GCC, we pride ourselves on providing quality professional development experiences for our teachers so that our students receive the best possible education. These writing workshops have been an opportunity for our teachers to keep up to date on current teaching practices and to implement these practices directly into the classroom. We look forward to working with Ann again on this exciting approach to teaching writing.
Sarah Jennings, Primary Curriculum Coordinator
