Studies show that as many as 60% of Australian teachers report feeling unprepared or ill-equipped to teach writing, suggesting methods are not delivering.
This becomes even more stark when looking at the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) results in recent years, which show a consistent drop in writing proficiency across various year levels.
Drawing on experiences gained over a 20-year academic career, including positions at four universities, Dr Ian Hunter founded Writer’s Toolbox in 2011. The educational writing program, powered by patented AI, was designed to help students master writing, but without doing the work for them.
In 2023, the program was recognised at New Zealand’s prestigious Hi-Tech Awards, winning ‘Most Innovative Hi-Tech Creative Technology Solution’ for its patented AI-enabled technology that’s improving student writing skills around the world.
This week, Writer’s Toolbox announced that teachers using the company’s online writing tool now have access to over 500 classroom-ready writing tasks aligned with the student Learning Journey.
Designed to support busy teachers in keeping their classrooms active, the writing activities are suitable for every student, in every year level, ability, and skill.
“There’s lots of talk today about the explicit teaching of writing. But what do you actually teach? SubjectLand solves this challenge,” Dr Hunter said. “Every year level, every writing skill a student needs to master is here – for a student’s entire schooling career. It gives teachers real solutions to the problem of writing improvement.”
With each task designed to test core student writing skills and progress, SubjectLand integrates seamlessly with each student’s learning, and offers a vast selection of educational writing tasks that can either be customized or assigned to the classroom as they are, saving teachers valuable time.
“It’s been three years in the making, involving every team in our business. We feel that now, more than ever, we need to do whatever is in our power to help lift writing outcomes in schools,” Dr Hunter said. “That’s why we made SubjectLand a freely available feature inside Toolbox, so every teacher can start using it from today.”