Almost three thousand schoolchildren will now learn to write creative essays and work with media sources according to the methods of US and Ukrainian experts. 50 teachers will teach essay writing in their schools. These teachers have gone through preselection and received special training in teaching writing methods.
“National Project: Writing an Essay” is innovative teaching writing for teachers and students and involves the implementation of unique pedagogical materials that will contribute to the development of critical thinking and reading literacy of Ukrainian schoolchildren.
The materials have been developed by the NGO “Smart Osvita” on the basis of the tools provided by the National Writing Project (NWP), and they are evidence-based (as proved by SRI research). The methods involve working with media texts and sources which is critically important for a country that is at war and is a target of propaganda attacks.
Currently, the project is being piloted, and during this stage “Smart Osvita” team is supervising the implementation of the materials in schools and is collecting feedback in order to improve the textbooks.
According to the reports of the UCAQE about the results of the analysis of the school-leavers’ tests, the school-leavers’ ability to write argumentative essays was a serious problem of Ukrainian schools even before the full-scale invasion.
“During the full-scale invasion students do not write essays at the multi-disciplinary test, that is why there is no recent data about their skills at essay writing. But we can make a reasonable assumption that the situation has not improved, but only deteriorated because of the stress, remote learning, frequent air-raid alarms, and the requirement for essay writing being removed from the MDT,” says a pedagogue, teacher of Ukrainian Language and Literature, trainer Kateryna Molodyk.
Moreover, says Kateryna Molodyk, the results of the PISA-2022 international comparative survey showed that 15-year-old Ukrainian schoolchildren have problems with reading literacy. They find it difficult to critically assess information in a text, to differentiate between facts and opinions, and to separate relevant information from irrelevant. Ukrainian schoolchildren are lagging behind their peers from the OECD countries by 2,5 years in terms of their reading literacy.
Our team expects that as a result of this project schoolchildren will learn to analyze, research and reflect about media texts, and create argumentative evidence-based essays, while teachers will become ambassadors for their colleagues in their regions and will spread the knowledge and skills they receive in the pilot.
“Smart Osvita” in the “National Project: Writing an Essay” will provide supervision throughout the year and will also conduct additional webinars and training sessions from both Ukrainian and international experts. The team will also conduct two tests (at the beginning of the academic year and at the end) to have relevant data about the efficiency of the tools. In the future, they are planning to create an online course for teachers, “Academic Writing”.
You can read more about how teachers participated in a five-day training on writing methods guided by Halyna Tytysh, Tetyana Vakulenko, Vasyl Tereshchenko, Tetyana Stus, Maria Tytarenko, Kateryna Molodyk, Tetyana Baydachenko, Oksana Shunevych, Maria Blazhko, Iryna Kalitovska, Lidia Povoroznyuk, and Halyna Kalyuzhna here.
«National Project: Writing an Essay» is implemented by “Smart Osvita” with the support of Grammarly, National Writing Project, Theirworld and Global Business Coalition for Education.
The piloting of the materials will be conducted with the support of International Renaissance Foundation.
