Last year, La Trobe University lecturer Melanie Henry started using AERO's School Writing Instruction Framework in her coursework, asking student teachers to work through the free, online professional learning modules as part of their training.
Like many in the university sector, Melanie has been tracking literacy skills among Australian primary and secondary school students for some years. 'Literacy should be stronger than it is, on average, and especially by the time students are in secondary school,' she said. 'But the reality is that – for a variety of reasons – a significant proportion of school students' writing skills are not developed enough to meet the demands of the curriculum or to deliver the outcomes those students deserve.'
AERO's writing instruction framework demonstrates that if teachers across all subjects can confidently teach writing for their subject, they can expect to see improvement in students' learning. The whole-of-school approach and professional development resources, released in June 2025, are proving popular.
'My undergraduate students are enjoying the writing resources AERO has developed – especially their user-friendly nature,' said Melanie. 'There's a focus on the fundamental building blocks, like explicitly teaching sentence structure as a starting place to improve student writing.'
Before becoming a university lecturer, Melanie taught high school. 'As a former teacher, I'm interested in teaching aids that work. For that reason, I've incorporated AERO's modules into my coursework.'
AERO's resources have gained attention more broadly at the university.
According to La Trobe's Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching, Chrissy Monteleone, AERO's writing framework is used across several courses in the Learning and Teaching program.
'Effectively teaching writing across subject areas at school is one of the more direct routes to lifting student literacy and learning,' said Chrissy, who also runs the University's Science of Mathematics Education (SOME) Lab.
'AERO's work is backed by evidence, and their resources have potential for pre-service and in-service teachers at different stages of their professional development,' she said. 'Our students and the subjects we teach across Learning and Teaching frequently tap into AERO materials.'
'At La Trobe, we are focused on preparing teachers who can confidently translate evidence into practice, because improving student writing begins with building teacher knowledge and capability,' said Professor Joanna Barbousas, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Education, Impact and Innovation and Dean of the School of Education.
AERO's practice resource, Leading writing instruction in your school, makes the case for improving student writing using a structured implementation approach that focuses on building teacher expertise in explicitly teaching writing across all subjects.
AERO's evidence shows improving writing instruction in schools relies on school leaders implementing a school-wide approach with structured implementation practices. The AERO framework emphasises that improving student writing depends primarily on building teachers' knowledge and instructional practices, not just changing curriculum materials.
The online professional learning courses La Trobe are using are part of AERO’s School Writing Instruction Framework. These materials are freely available on AERO’s website. AERO’s framework has 3 courses with associated resources that cover:
- making writing a school priority
- using data to understand the school’s writing needs
- building teacher knowledge of sentence structure, grammar and effective writing assessment practices through professional learning
- a staged, structured approach to implementation.