National conference on the writing process

The Foundation for Educational Services (FES), in cooperation with the Department Curriculum Management at the Education Division, is organising a two-day national conference entitled Writing To Learn, Writing To Teach: Writing Process for School Community Development.

The conference, which will be held on September 16 and 17 at the Tumas Dingli Primary School, Attard, will discuss the key role of the writing process in the personal and academic development of teachers, parents and children in the school community.

The conference is being organised within the framework of the Malta Writing Programme (MWP), which is part-financed by the Department Curriculum Management and managed by the FES. It is the culmination of four years of growth of the MWP, in partnership with the National Writing Programme of the US.

Since 2001, MWP has trained 982 teachers in intensive writing institutes and professional development sessions; supported writing process teachers in their classroom practice and to develop into communities of writers; achieved expertise transfer from its American partner by training Maltese writing process trainers to spearhead the growth of the programme, and supported writing application in the home through family writing initiatives that featured the participation of 228 families in Malta.

The aims of the conference are:

To celebrate the achievements of writing process teachers in Malta;

To strengthen the role of the writing process as a key literacy strategy in Malta;

To strengthen the community of teacher-writers in Malta, and

To provide a key conceptual and practical learning experience for educators and education stakeholders in Malta.

The conference will include two internationally-renowned keynote speakers - Prof. Richard Sterling, executive director of the National Writing Project and adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Graduate School of Education, and Dr Christine Johnston, director of Rowan University's Centre for the Advancement of Learning.

The conference will include practical writing process workshops with applications for different home and school settings, and displays by teachers of how they apply writing process to their own classroom situation.

For further information visit the FES website www.fes.org.mt/conference_01.html or send an e-mail to Mario Zerafa on mario.zerafa@gov.mt.