The Writers Club with Gail Loane

This workshop covered the elements that make an effective writing lesson/program.

Gail covered the importance of having talking buddies when working with the whole class. A talking buddy is a person that a child has all discussions with when on the mat. This way all children were engaged and it is like you are teaching to all children not just the children with their hands up. When asking children you can call upon any child to answer a question/share their ideas.

One of the points that Gail discussed was having a literacy progam that all staff in a school were on board with and showed progression and development within the whole school. She showed us examples of how some schools achieved this. How teachers from year 1 right through to year 8 marked exactly the same.

The steps that are needed to make an 'effective teacher' in writing according to Gail were; knowing our students; how to teach and having our own writing knowledge.

One of the main points that Gail expressed was the power and importance of a teacher sharing their own writing with the children that they teach.

These were the 5 points that Gail believed should be evident in all children's writing books:
- Mileage: how much writing is achieved, working on more than one piece of writing at a time
- Different Purposes: what are we teaching and how are we checking the children's learning
- Evidence of student crafting: evidence of students editing and revisiting their work (she said that she would recommend doing this as children are working, not at the end of a piece of writing ( A writer does not write a whole novel then go and change it all. They do it as they are working)).
- Teacher Presence: evidence that a teacher is checking and providing children with feedback (should be done after ever writing session)
- Models of Texts: using a range of different texts as exemplars, sharing your own work with the children (as you are teaching a writing type complete your own writing that you model the whole process with).

There was a child's writing note book that was shared and she explained how it was used across different year levels. This was a we book that a child took home every day and was able to jot down ideas at any stage that were then used for independent writing sessions. The teachers could also send home tasks for the children to complete over night for the writing lesson the next day. E.G: Jot down in your book how a can-opener works (children can draw a picture, write key words, describe/record their work any way they choose).
This was then used the following day for a piece of descriptive writing.

We were shown the different aspects of a successful writing lesson (I drew this onto the info booklet if you want to have a closer look at it). She also provided us with a range of lessons that we can teach for writing and how one idea can be adapted across different year levels.


Jenny Schmidli
19/05/14