Rachel Williams,a researcher at the Woolf Fisher Research Centre at the University of Auckland shared some of the research findings of her pilot study of a blogging programme that she developed to address the literacy slump that occurs during summer holidays.
She found that learners who participated in the Manaiakalani Summer blogging programme did not experience a significant drop off in their test scores as measured by the e-asttle writing test.
The blue line on the graph shows the summer bloggers test scores over the year. The red line shows a matched sample of learners who did not blog over the summer (matching gender, ethnicity and achievement) . Students who didn't participate in this continued learning over the holiday through blogging show the trend we are familiar with - that writing outcomes rise through the school year and slide over the summer break.
