The Key Principles of the Writing Revolution Revealed

Nathan Heaps: The writing revolution says that students aren't going to teach themselves how to write very well. If you leave it to chance, students will tend to write what they've always written or they'll write the way that they talk. So unless we give them explicit instruction in writing, beginning in the early years, we're actually setting up a lot of our students for failure. Other aspects are around that grammar has always been a bit of a question mark with the teaching of writing. Writing becomes a form of retrieval practice when you embed content in the writing sessions. It's a powerful teaching tool and thinking tool, not just a tool for developing the writer's skill set.