Last week we celebrated the milestone of 20 million words written on Writing Legends! We feel that this component will be of tremendous benefit to both teachers and students. We are proud to have had such a positive impact in only three months since launch.
One thing that concerns us is that we are seeing a significant trend across the system of girls writing 27% more than boys. Furthermore we a seeing a widening of the the gap in Year 6. We are uncertain if this trend is indicative of all student writing, both online and offline, however we have no reason to believe it is not. We are concerned about the long term implications of such a disparity and we very much believe in the notion of writing creates writers.
Over this last week we have made three additions to Writing Legends to assist teachers in encouraging increased writing:
- The inclusion of a goal setting component where teachers are able to choose the start time and the average word goal per week for their students.
- The highlighting of students who are 25% below the average word count in their class.
- A breakdown of average word count for both boys and girls within classes.
We have also included a section where the most prolific writing classes from the previous week are recognised.
Vocabulary Analytics
Following on from the success of Spelling Analytics, we will soon be releasing functionality to will enable to teachers to see how the breadth of their students vocabulary compares with the top performing classes on the platform. We believe this “community of learners” and in particular the shared learning approach to be tremendously beneficial. A core goal of Writing Legends is to help students expand their vocabulary.
Goal setting to encourage regular writing
The Student Reports sections now alerts the teachers of any student 25% or more below class average in terms of words written.
Breakdown of class averages to easily see if there are significant disparities between the boys and girls within your class.
