A remarkable school in Northern Queensland has taken tremendous strides in improving student writing.
Since implementing the Seven Steps at the end of 2014, principal Claudine Moncur-White and the teachers of Rasmussen State School have transformed their school from one of the worst performing Queensland schools to significantly outperforming the state in writing improvement between 2015-2017.
The improvements they’ve seen haven’t just been in writing ability. In under four years Rasmussen, a school with an ICSEA value of 803 and a high population of at risk students, has built up student confidence in writing, increased their willingness to learn and improved communication and engagement with staff and peers.
In just a few short years Rasmussen State School saw some incredible improvements. Claudine noted the immediate impact was in students’ attitude and demeanour.
And from a data perspective, Claudine has seen vast improvements in her students’ NAPLAN results over the last four years.
- Rasmussen’s Student Gain (Year 3 and 5 results) between 2014 to 2016 saw massive improvements compared to both the national average and schools with similar students, improving by half a band more than the national average.
- Since 2014 the average results for Year 3s in NAPLAN’s writing component have jumped from Band 2, to Bands 3 and 4.
- Year 5 averages have also improved the equivalent of 1¼ -bands over the same period.
- For the 2015-17 period, the state of Queensland had an effective size gain of -0.02. Rasmussen scored substantially higher (0.43), indicating that while the state’s writing improvement had stagnated, Rasmussen students were flourishing!
Read Rasmussen’s full story on how they implemented school-wide change to improve student writing and engagement.
“Because the Seven Steps blends so well with the curriculum it makes [teaching] so easy and straightforward. The students at Rasmussen have become much more engaged in school and have the confidence and willingness to put pen to paper.”
