A recent nationwide survey uncovered a concerning trend: teachers are now doing less professional development due to the impacts of covid, lack of time, staff shortages, time-in-lieu rules and budget constraints.
Responses from over 950 primary and secondary teachers and school leaders across all sectors revealed that teachers are crying out for hybrid learning models, flexible professional development options and support in teaching writing.
A subsequent focus group with Literacy Leaders and classroom teachers confirmed that the current challenges in education mean that releasing teachers for live training is no longer a viable option for many schools. Professional development needs to be flexible and on-demand, so that school leaders can fit it into their busy school schedule – but it still needs to be high quality and interactive.
In response to this, one award-winning training company – Seven Steps to Writing Success – has launched the perfect solution: a new on-demand training option available on their popular online platform Teacher Hub.
Meeting teachers where they’re at
Seven Steps has transformed its award-winning live training into short, on-demand training videos that allow teachers to learn at their own pace, individually or with colleagues. This new offering builds teachers' confidence and skills in teaching writing, just like their live training but in a bite-sized format.
Seven Steps workshops are known for being lively and interactive, with teachers collaborating and trying out the activities themselves to gain a better understanding of the techniques. The new training videos replicate that experience, with interactive activities that give teachers a taste of how fun and impactful the Seven Steps approach can be.
What’s more, the videos are supported by a suite of ready-made resources, helping teachers put what they’ve learnt into practice straight away before moving on to the next training video. This chunked approach reduces the cognitive load on both teachers and students as they roll out the program.
Offering greater flexibility
The survey results showed that school leaders want the option to run training at school – specifically, short sessions that fit into existing staff meetings. This isn’t surprising given that 90% of principals report being short-staffed, a major obstacle to releasing teachers for external training.
Seven Steps developed the bite-sized training videos to give schools that option. ‘The goal was to alleviate some of the issues facing teachers by providing access to high-quality training any time, anywhere,’ says Sarah Bakker, Teacher Resources Manager at Seven Steps.
School leaders can use the videos to run ongoing professional development sessions. Or individual teachers can watch them at a time that suits them. Having the key theory and actionable expert insights at their fingertips is invaluable.
Improving learning retention
Research has shown that learners forget 50% of the information presented within an hour, 70% within a day and 90% within a week. Alarming stats! But teachers know to combat this by breaking learning down and revisiting concepts to consolidate students’ learning.
We can (and should) apply this to our own learning because ‘experience-based, bite-size, “just-in-time” learning is more effective than traditional classroom instruction’. The survey echoed this, showing that teachers want training to be ‘chunked’ so they can learn, implement and revisit new concepts across a term or a series of sessions.
The new training videos from Seven Steps allow teachers to grab actionable insights in just 15- to 20-minute bites. These short, drip-fed training sessions allow teachers to learn, implement and reflect on new concepts to reduce the cognitive load. They can also rewatch the training videos any time, leading to better retention of learning in the long term.
Empowering teachers to teach great writing
More than half of survey respondents felt that writing was the area where students needed the most help. So it makes sense that professional development for writing is the number one priority for many Australian schools.
But writing always seems to be a priority for PD in Australian schools. Why? One word – NAPLAN:
‘A review of 10 million NAPLAN year 3–9 writing results and more than 350 persuasive writing samples by the government-funded Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) has found students’ writing declined significantly in every key skill area but spelling over seven years to 2018,’ (Sydney Morning Herald).
To turn these results around, students need explicit instruction and continual practice in the core skills of writing: generating great ideas, organising their thinking and creating coherent texts that entertain or persuade an audience.
But these skills can be hard to teach. It’s much easier to focus on grammar, punctuation and spelling because there’s a right or wrong answer. This is the trap many schools fall into.
Seven Steps is Australia’s leader in helping teachers unlock their students’ writing ability. It explicitly teaches the craft of writing using evidence-based pedagogy. And it gets results.
Schools teaching the Seven Steps have seen dramatic improvements in students' writing in just 10 weeks, with 68% of students improving by more than one entire NAPLAN band. More importantly, schools report that teacher confidence and student engagement soars.
The new bite-size training videos, presented by experienced Seven Steps teachers, mean that more teachers now have access to the skills they need to feel more confident in their practice and improve students’ writing outcomes.
Keeping the learning alive
Teachers are time-poor. This is not a new phenomenon, but it’s worsened over the last few years with a raft of challenges stopping teachers from attending live training. Teachers’ ongoing professional development remains vital, however. And PD in the effective teaching of writing especially so. Which is why it’s reassuring to know there are flexible, trusted options available for teachers of writing, whatever the circumstances.
Sign up for a free trial of Teacher Hub to view 2 of the bitesize training videos. In Teacher Hub, navigate to the Narrative Writing Course and go to the Learn tab in the Getting Started module and the Step 2: Sizzling Starts module.
