Writing Instruction for the Early Years of School that Makes Sense
In this 12 week Teach Along you will move from stuck to successful as you support your lower primary
students along the path to proficient and fluent writing.
Begins August 24th, 2022
Before I tell you about this Teach Along, let's talk about who this Teach Along is for. This Teach Along is a great fit for you if:
- You are a dedicated teacher with no shortage of ambition for yourself and your students
- You are tired of feeling overwhelmed by the task of teaching well
- You are ready to develop your practice so that you can impact your student outcomes in a bigger way than you already are
- You might be a school leader or senior teaching looking for way to support your team of teachers to achieve great things for students
- You hear a small voice inside your heads saying, 'The way we teach writing just doesn't make sense'
- You wish you could find alignment between reading and writing approaches to streamline teaching and boost learning
- You are searching for the way to support all students in whole class lessons
This Teach Along will give you the tools, information and support to help you build your ‘kit bag’ of teaching skills
and get every child on the road to proficient and confident writing.
By the end of this Teach Along you will have
- Developed a strong understanding of how to teach the
key actions of systematic writing instruction in line with the Australian Curriculum scope and sequence instead of spending another year down the rabbit hole of the internet trying to figure out what to teach. - Examined your student data to determine impactful goals for both language development and writing so that you can confidently target teaching to meet student needs.
- Planned and conducted lessons using the explicit teaching model that leave your students feeling supported instead of lost.
- Developed an explicit and highly efficient teaching program that covers both transcription and composition
- Gained clarity around the role of genre, rich texts and 'guided writing' in your overall writing program
- Conducted daily shared writing lessons in your class that build oral sentence level proficiency so that students are willing and able to write when the time comes
- Planned and taught lessons with the aim of using oral tasks to build language development and plan for writing so that you never again have to hear a student say, "I don't know what to write!"
- Developed an understanding of spelling that includes phonics, morphology and etymology instead of the usual 'spelling list with a test on Friday' that don't lead to improved student outcomes.
- Planned and taught systematic, daily writing lessons that leave even your most reluctant writers feeling successful
- Used decodable texts to support children’s transcription development as part of your daily literacy lessons instead of trying to carve out even more time in your day.
Enrol in Writing Success in the Early Primary Years Today
Pick the price option that best fits your needs:
3 Monthly Payments Of
$128
One Time Payment
$379
What's New in 2022?
1 - In 2022 you will receive a hard copy Teach Along participant workbook delivered straight to your door to enable you to record all of your learning throughout the 12 weeks. No more rushing to print the worksheets or losing pieces of paper. (Valued at $40)
2 - In 2022 you will also have the opportunity to submit a video of you teaching or submit an audio or video question for direct feedback and coaching support. This additional coaching support enables you to take your learning and implementation to the next level and experience personalised coaching. This is not a requirement, but an opportunity to maximise growth.
(Valued at $220)
“I am new to my EALD teacher position and this gave me a great place to start for small group work across year levels without extensive time planning and hoping I am supporting their work in class. I know that what I do in a text based unit will be beneficial language learning.”
Jillian
“It was practical advice that was differentiated for year levels as we went along. I liked the displays shown from classrooms that were 'real', they were hand drawn and with sticky notes which showed how important the learning is, not that it has to be 'pretty'. There were many things I hadn't thought of doing and new ways of looking at things. Made me feel passionate.”
Hannah
“I loved how it was small bursts over a few weeks. It allowed us to start implementing as we went along. I loved how everything you do is evidence based and you also unpack the curriculum in user friendly language.”
Jessica
“I really enjoyed the modelling and deconstructing texts, this was something I touched on with narratives but then brushed over so it was interesting to me to see the details that can be pulled out. I also liked how it was relevant to what I am currently teaching and how I can approach future planning.”
Rhiannon
“I liked your honesty and examples of how to work what you are explaining in a classroom setting. The Teach Along was amazing, very helpful and being able to download them and complete them at our own time and pace made it extremely accessible.”
Janine
“The set up of the teach-a-long means I can take this at a pace that is conducive to learning. Small amounts of information is provided as short videos which I can refer back to as I need. This is brilliant!! Thank you for this as a resource I can look back on to help me consolidate what I am learning.
I really appreciate the time and effort you have made to make this all come together - the tech / templates / helpfulness. Love this!
”
Sue
What's Inside
Module 1 - Building the Foundations for Writing
Module one begins to build the foundations for writing. You will walk away from this first lesson with simple instructional routines that you can try out in your classroom immediately. We will kick off with some fundamentals of handwriting and an instructional routine for building correct, automatic letter formation. From there, we examine an instructional routine for word level writing practice before moving onto establishing simple, no-nonsense spelling routines. Finally, we explore morphology and its role in spelling development. This lesson includes a suggestion for an instructional routine for introducing and then building familiarity with morphemes.
Module 2 - The Power of the Sentence
Module two is all about the sentence. We will begin with a brief of explanation of the concept of the sentence before diving right in to how to help children distinguish between sentences and fragments, right from the foundation year. Lesson two continues developmentally appropriate and responsive instruction around building longer sentences through sentence combing activities. In lesson three you will learn about sentence expansion and its role in helping children develop richer oral and written ideas and responses. Finally, I will walk you through, step by step, how to use decodables texts to structure your sentence level instruction.
Module 3 - Building the Field for Learning (1)
In Module three we begin to teach our text-based unit, focusing on ‘building the field’. All too often we assume that children are ready to begin to engage with a text, leading to us not providing enough ‘lead in’ work. We begin in lesson one by introducing the text using an explicit process (yes, there is one!). We then engage our students in an oral activity to predict the sorts of words that might appear in the target text. Lesson three sees us teaching vocabulary using instructional routines supported by some of the most respected researchers in the field. We learn how to truly engage children in vocabulary learning without worksheets or dictionaries. Finally, we explore how to ask great questions to get our students really thinking about the text you are teaching from.
Module 4 - Building the Field for Learning (2)
Once we have introduced students to the text, it is time to deepen their engagement. Lesson one helps us connect students with the audience and purpose of the text. From there we explore options for helping students use their voices and bodies to bring the text to life. Lesson three brings in explicit comprehension activities as we use an explicit teaching model to help our students create meaningful connections and in lesson four, I show you how to get the students to commit their initial thoughts about the text to paper. Throughout these lessons, I help you understand more about how to scaffold and support all students so that you are meeting them where they are up to.
Module 5 - Modelling and Deconstructing (Text Level)
In module five I will walk you through how to model and deconstruct at text level. We start with unpacking the structure of the text. From the foundation year, this knowledge helps children understand how texts work and provides the foundation for the language that gives them control of this in the upper primary years. Next comes setting and the opportunity to build our students’ capacity for descriptive language and setting the tone of a text. Lesson 3 sees us learning simple structures to explore characters, learning how authors bring them to life. Again, the focus is on every child being actively involved in the lessons leading to full engagement and strong learning. Finally, lesson four will help you understand the relationship with the visual and text aspects of writing and provide you with a lesson plan to support even the youngest student to work with this concept at the same time as challenging your more capable learners to build richness and complexity into their writing.
Module 6 - Modelling and Deconstructing
(Sentences and Grammar - 1)
Where module five saw us modelling and deconstructing at text level, module six walks us through this process at sentence and text level. Far from being a dry and decontextualised approach, the teaching sequences I will share with you help you to integrate syntax and ‘grammar’ learning in a way that provides context AND explicit teaching for students. Lesson one presents information and routines to learn about language devices at different ages. Lesson two enables our students to move beyond the repetitive ‘said’, ‘went’ and ‘did’ that prevent our students’ writing from reaching the next level. In lesson three you can start overcome your fear of ‘grammar’ by learning simple teaching sequences for learning about verbs. Then, in lesson four, we will look at how to get children actually using verbs in a meaningful and effective way.
Module 7 - Modelling and Deconstructing
(Sentences and Grammar - 2)
We continue the grammar journey in module seven with nouns and prepositions. These lessons go beyond simple word level. We will explore the noun and prepositional phrase and their role in sentence level language production. Lesson one shows you how to teach children about different types of nouns. Lesson two provides the instructional routines to get children using this language orally and then in writing. In lesson three we move on to learning about prepositions before creating engagement in language use through specific, simple routines in lesson four.
Module 8 - Text Level Writing, Sharing and Reflecting
Module eight is where all of this learning comes together. We dip back into comprehension in lesson one, selecting a further comprehension focus. Lesson two gives students the opportunity to respond to the exemplar text. Lesson three is about creating an extended piece of text, differentiating and adjusting as appropriate to support our students. I will walk you, step by step through a process you can use to guide your students in text creation in a way that helps them feel confident and success every step of the way. Finally, lesson 4 provides suggestions for ways that you can engage children in showcasing, reflecting on and discussing theirs and others’ writing.
Module 9 - Planning a Unit of Work
You will walk away from module nine with some clear decisions made about the focus of your first text-based unit. The first decision comes in lesson 1, where we explore language development (through the lens of both EAL/D and English speaking students). You will then decide on a language goal for your class and how you will differentiate to suit your students’ needs. Once you have a language goal, lesson two helps you understanding how to break down the writing process and develop clear writing goals. Differentiation is, again, a key part of this decision making. My super simple planning templates make this a simple process. Once these two decisions are made, choosing an exemplar text then becomes a whole lot easier. Lesson three will take you through the considerations of text selection in a step by step way and lead you into lesson four. This lesson will show you how to analyse the language and language features of a text in order to identify whether it is a good fit for your students. This step also provides you with the foundation lists of words and phrases to make your planning more streamlined as you work through your unit.
Module 10 - Wrap Up and Plan for Next Steps
Module ten is where we set you up for success beyond the Teach Along. You will have the opportunity to reflect on your actions so far and then set specific goals for your students in the term to come. You will make key decisions about your first Text Based unit and decide on how you will continue to learn and grow once the Teach Along is finished.
Enrol in Writing Success in the Early Primary Years Today
Pick the price option that best fits your needs:
3 Monthly Payments Of
$128
One Time Payment
$379
When you enrol in this Teach Along , you'll get...
10 action modules that show you literally everything you need to get your students writing in the early years of primary school.
Build your confidence in teaching writing in a systematic way that leaves every child feeling successful.
A hardcopy workbook to help you record your experiences along with goal setting cards and progress stickers.
You’ll be given access to one module per week so that you have ample time to dive into the lessons and implement that portion before moving on.
I do this to protect your time, attention and focus while sparing you from the intense overwhelm that can stop us from fully realising the potential of the professional learning we undertake.
This Teach Along can be completed week by week as modules are released or self-paced at a later date to suit your own circumstances.
Enrol in Writing Success in the Early Primary Years Today
Pick the price option that best fits your needs:
3 Monthly Payments Of
$128
One Time Payment
$379
And you'll be backed by my 14 day money back guarantee
Let me say this upfront.
The Writing Success in the First Years of School Teach Along is the most comprehensive and practical course for teachers who are committed to implementing systematic writing instruction.
Now here’s the thing.
By the end of the first 14 days you will have received access to the knowledge library and the first two modules of the Teach Along.
Meaning that you will have had a chance to plan your instructional routines and design your perfect writing unit in a way that responds to student needs.
If, after the first 14 days of the Teach Along you don’t feel motivated or think that this is the right course for you, then get in touch with me, show me the work you have done so far and I will refund your investment. See my full refund policy here.
Enrol in Writing Success in the Early Primary Years Today
Pick the price option that best fits your needs:
3 Monthly Payments Of
$128
One Time Payment
$379
Frequently Asked Questions
Burning Questions That Others Have Asked About Participating in A Teach Along:
I have small children. What if I can’t keep up with the program?
There is no keeping up and no falling behind. Teach Alongs are designed to allow you to access the materials in your time and your own pace.
There seems to be a lot of information. Are you sure I can manage it all?
Of course! If you are hungry to be a better teacher and are committed to getting results for every student, then you will be just fine. Remember, you have lifetime access to the Teach Along materials so you can take it one little bit at a time. You don’t need to implement everything all at once.
Do I need tech skills to participate?
If you can access your email you have the necessary skills to participate. The Simplero Site where the Teach Along ‘lives’ is as easy to use as clicking a button. If you have any technical difficulties, just get in touch. You aren’t on your own!
When I join up, will I get immediate access to all the modules?
No. A module is released each week of the Teach Along (except for the implementation weeks) to give you the opportunity to take things slowly and not be overloaded by too much information all at once.
I am an early career/mid-career/experienced teacher. Is this Teach Along for me?
Yes! Whether you are an early career or experienced teacher there are things to learn from this Teach Along. For newer teachers, I will provide you with easy to use lesson templates and resources so that you can focus on teaching your students instead of trying to figure everything else for yourself. For more experienced teachers, you will have the opportunity to revisit many aspects of teaching practice and refine your skills.
Still “Thinking About It?”
You should give Writing Success in the Early Primary Years a chance if you are motivated by any of the following:
- You have a feeling that there are better ways to help children learn to read than what we see in most classrooms currently.
- You have a burning desire to reach EVERY child in your class. Not just some.
- You have been trying to learn more about writing instruction but are just not sure if the information you have found is reliable.
- Your students have been getting some ok results in previous years but you want those results to be better.
- You have a good grasp on the theory of writing instruction, but need to know more about what it looks like in practice.
I can't wait to bring you this 12 week Teach Along.
I remember clearly when I felt completely lost in teaching writing. Then I created a system of teaching that made my life easier and supported my students in a way that I had never been able to before.
We all know that it doesn't make sense to ask kids to just sit down and write a complete text before they are ready, but what do we do instead? This Teach Along will take you step by step through creating the daily routines and complete units using Rich Text that will get your students on the road to proficient reading.
If you choose to accept my invitation to grow in your practice and commit to participating fully, I guarantee that the 12 weeks of the Writing Success in the Early Primary Years Teach Along will help you grow in confidence, skills and the ability to support every student in your class.
I look forward to meeting you inside this All-in Teach Along!
Take care,
Jocelyn
Enrol in Writing Success in the Early Primary Years Today
Pick the price option that best fits your needs: