First Steps and IWB Involvement

Quite a few of our staff spent two of the recent holidays at First Steps For Writing training in a bid to standardise our school approach to English with the new Australian reporting guidelines in mind. It was a jam packed two days with what was normally an 18 hour course squeezed into 12. First Steps is a West Australian initiative and is very construtivist in nature but with clear mapping of skills and loads of excellent Teaching activities. With a full day of advanced IWB training coming up tomorrow, I kept thinking how different classroom scenarios could be enhanced with our ACTIVboards. The trainers talked a lot about investigation and modelling of writing formats - what better way to model writing process than on the big screen? So, this could be a good combination - First Steps methodology with ACTIVboard technology. I still wonder how to move the IWB beyond just being a teaching tool - perhaps as we all become more familiar with the First Steps program, more learning opportunities could unfold.