The NAPLAN writing structure every student should know

NAPLAN writing is assessed against explicit criteria: audience, text structure, ideas, persuasive devices, vocabulary, cohesion, paragraphing, sentence structure, punctuation and spelling.

Teach the plan first. Five minutes of planning almost always produces a higher band than five extra minutes of writing.

Use a repeatable paragraph shape, statement, elaboration, evidence, link. Students who internalise one structure write faster and more coherently under pressure.

Finally, spend the last three minutes proofreading. Punctuation and spelling are directly assessed criteria and are the cheapest marks in the test.