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Education HQ, March 18, 2024 by Nathaniel Swain

Do you ever find yourself at a loss for words or battling writer’s block?

Do your colleagues or students submit writing that is unclear or riddled with grammatical errors? It's a common experience and could stem from running short on ideas.

However, this challenge also relates to the cognitive demands of writing. Writing is not just about putting words on paper; it requires a fluency in English sentence structure which many of us lack, as it typically has not been taught in school.

The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, November 26, 2022, By Staff Writers

Nathaniel Swain began his teaching career four years ago at Parkville College, a Melbourne school for incarcerated youths, before shifting this year to Brandon Park Primary, a middle-class school in Wheelers Hill. What the adolescents inside the justice system shared was a poor experience of school, beginning with learning difficulties going undetected, Swain says, a failing that happens every day in advantaged and disadvantaged schools, when the best evidence on effective teaching practice is not used. Emina McLean, Head of English at Docklands Primary, also led research by the Australian Education Research Organisation on entrenched flaws in teaching writing in Australian schools. The pair are among a growing community of young educators driving a shift in primary years teaching, towards a systematic style that builds one piece of learning upon another, moving on only when concepts are mastered.