Lake Rerewhakaaitu School provided targeted writing development for its senior students through the Kōtui Ako Creative Writing class, leading to improved academic gains. Learn more about their success.
It can be difficult to consistently strengthen the writing skills of all students within a Year 4-8 composite class. To address this, Lake Rerewhakaaitu School enrolled five of our Year 6-8 students in the Kōtui Ako Creative Writing class in 2024. This initiative focused on developing individual writing styles and expanding creative writing abilities.
Assessment data was compared during the year showing that these students made accelerated progress of 15 to 28 months within curriculum levels.
This class gave students the opportunity to:
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Gain skills and knowledge around the language feature types we use in creative writing.
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Learn how to use and interact with digital platforms such as google classroom and zoom.
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Have in-depth conversations around their writing with students of the same age and academic learning levels.
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All students who participated in the class made accelerated progress in their writing achievement once starting the class.
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Could contact and work with e-teacher through email anytime.
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Learn the structure of certain poem types and styles.
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Find and grow their own writing style.
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Gain a deeper understanding of what exactly creative writing is.
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Work with another teacher who has a different teaching style to their daily in-class teacher.
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Stay focused on a particular subject and really go in-depth in both structure and language.
Teacher perspective positives:
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Open-ended and continuous communication from the e-teacher around student progress within the class and any behavioural issues were worked through together.
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Clearly written reports provided by the e-Teacher that showed the learning objectives achieved by each student, these could be used to inform parents of exactly what students achieved in the class.
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Open in-depth discussions with students about their learning after sessions where they felt they were the expert.
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Noticing the growth in students questioning and reasoning skills around the different types of language features.
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Confident students who were excited and passionate about sharing their learning with the rest of our class, and the wider school.
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Motivated students who just couldn’t wait for writing time, both online and in class.
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Organised students who would be ready and waiting for their online class to start.
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Students coming in and completing homework tasks before school through their own personal drive to achieve.
As a teacher in a rural school where our numbers are low, especially in our senior class, the opportunity that this paper provided my students was invaluable! Both academically, but also socially. As a teacher, talking with the e-Teachers and looking at their planning and the way they scaffold their lessons was valuable to growing my own understanding of different ways we could engage and inspire students to achieve in creative writing.
More information on the Kōtui Ako VLN Creative Writing programme.