Teaching and Assessing Writing in the Primary School

Eithne Kennedy is a teacher educator in the School of Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education (LLECE), DCU Institute of Education and leads the DCU Centre for Literacy Research, Policy and Practice. She is a former primary classroom teacher with 14 years of classroom experience (K-12th Grade) in Ireland and the United States. As director of the Write to Read research initiative, she collaborates with schools designated as disadvantaged to create powerful literacy environments that motivate and engage children as readers, writers and thinkers. Gerry Shiel, formerly a Research Fellow at Educational Research Centre, Dublin, has overseen several large-scale assessments at national level, including the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment and National Assessments of Reading Literacy and Mathematics. He has also been involved in the development of standardised tests in reading Literacy in English and Irish. He continues to collaborate with Eithne Kennedy on the Write to Read Project.