In just one year, Grange Primary School in South Australia has transformed their writing program, developing passionate, creative award-winning writers! Grange students performed over and above all expectations in this year’s City of Charles Sturt ‘Mayoral Make a Book Literacy Challenge’. Of the 650+ entries from students across the municipality, 23 of the 40…
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Step by Step Blog
Putting it Together
When it’s all said and done, this is the time of year to finish off, wrap up and enjoy. Students who have been introduced to the Seven Steps across the year may be wanting to practise all their skills. Time to put it all together! These four simple writing prompts ask students to draft short…
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Getting Emotional
What is the most powerful book you have ever read? Books like this stay with us long after we have finished reading the last page because they engage our emotions. They might have made us laugh or cry. Perhaps they filled us with fear or hope. It doesn’t matter what emotion they inspired; the important…
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The Credit Goes to You, The Educators
Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person in the world! An average day for me starts by hopping onto the computer and reading emails from teachers about how engaged their students are and how amazing their writing has become. This one is from Cherie from Prescott College Southern in South Australia. I remember a young…
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So you want to be an author?
Lots of our students tell us they do. Which is wonderful, because it really motivates them to write! It can be a great boost to a class to ask each student to think like a real, professional author. Teach them the questions authors ask themselves: How are you going to start the story and grab…
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Making Magic with Words
Wearing all black today? Hair looking a bit odd, or is that a funny hat? No, you’re not in Melbourne for Fashion Week – it’s Hallowe’en and the costumes are out again! Before you groan – some of us do love the dress-ups and spooky stories – we just wanted to share some of our…
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That Sinking Feeling
Sometimes a story can express so much about how we feel. Look at the first of the four picture writing prompts below. Is the hand sinking into the puddle – or rising out of it? That depends on your point of view. Maybe the puddle is an illusion – or perhaps the hand is an…
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Two things we’ve learnt from NAPLAN 2018
Every year, our Seven Steps creator and CEO Jen McVeity sits the NAPLAN writing test – in pretty much the same conditions Australian students face. And every year she finds it hard. As an author, it’s obviously not the actual writing that’s a challenge. In fact, Jen feels that the NAP Marking Criteria truly values…
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