And what this means for teachers of writing!

Teachers need to provide students with ample opportunities to practise writing. Remember the saying - good writing is five percent inspiration; ninety-five percent perspiration.

Good writing has transformative qualities. It teaches us about what it is to be human, how the world operates and how the world might be. Teachers need to establish, encourage and value writing communities in the classroom.

Teachers need to demonstrate the process of writing to students. They should show students how to generate and organise ideas, draft and revise work and analyse and edit their own and others’ writing. Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to experience the stages in the process of writing. Teachers also need to provide text models and examine with students the structures and features of these texts. Both the process and the product must be valued!

The best writing is about emotions - anger, fear, joy, envy, hatred, love, sadness. Just ask another human about which of these emotions they have never experienced. Teachers need to encourage writing about the emotions.

Good writing is personal; it comes from the lived experience. Good writing is also imagined; it comes from the mind. By combining the experienced and the imagined, the potential for magical writing is palpable. Teachers need to encourage both types of writing in the classroom.

Writing is interdependent with all other language modes, particularly reading but also speaking, listening, viewing and representing. Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to develop all language modes in the classroom.

Good writing includes specific detail. Teachers need to encourage students to be specific in their writing - a eucalypt rather than a tree, a Holden rather than a car and morose not sad (with apologies to John Keating).

Teachers need to encourage students to paint with the words, to describe and show - rather than simply tell. Good writing is clear, detailed and gives readers enough information to build up a strong image or picture in their minds.

Teachers need to highlight the importance of finding the right voice for their characters. Once the voice is established, the rest will often follow. Finding the right voice is akin to an actor finding the right walk for a character.

Writing must be shared and celebrated. Teachers need to display student writing and encourage the creation of mini-books and class anthologies, magazines and newspapers. Teachers need to publish students’ work in the school newsletter, intranet and magazine. Teachers need to ensure that students enter their best work in writing competitions. And most important of all, teachers need to read student writing aloud in the classroom.