Writer’s Toolbox delivers best results in 15 years of teaching

About Nexus International School

Nexus International School is a private, co-educational school for ages 3 to 18 in Singapore. It uses the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum and caters to a diverse cohort representing over 60 nationalities. No single nationality makes up more than 20% of the school population, and eight languages are spoken in any one classroom.

Success snapshot

Twelve months after Nexus implemented Writer’s Toolbox in years 3 to 6:

• Students are more engaged, confident writers, improving their writing strength by an average of 31.9%
• Teachers are more confident about teaching writing explicitly, knowing exactly which priorities to focus on
• Excitement in writing has been reignited across the whole community, for teachers, learners, and parents
  

'Writer’s Toolbox has reignited engagement and excitement around writing across the whole community. There is a greater sense of investment from teachers and learners, and increasingly from parents, in understanding how writing develops and how it can be improved.'
– Jessica Lindsay, Nexus International School Singapore.

Before Writer’s Toolbox

Nexus is a truly international school, with teachers from around the world who reflect the diversity and global perspectives of its students. However, this led to inconsistency in how writing and grammar were taught.

'The biggest challenge was the lack of a systematic progression for writing across the school,’ said Language Arts Coordinator Jessica Lindsay. ‘We needed a clearer shared understanding of what effective writing instruction looked like and how skills should develop over time.'

Not only did Nexus want a  more systematic approach to improve writing, but they needed a programme to adapt to the learner, work around the IB curriculum, and include professional development for teachers. The programme also had to work with:

• a diverse student cohort, with 44 per cent of students speaking at least two languages. Nexus offers tiered learning for learners with English as an additional language (EAL), so needed a programme that would work effectively for both EAL Intensive and mainstream learners.
• the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP). ‘We never wanted to adapt our curriculum around a programme. We wanted the programme to fit naturally within our Units of Inquiry, writing traits, and existing learning goals,’ said Ms Lindsay.
• a 70:30 blended approach. Nexus requires that approximately 70 per cent of writing is done by hand and 30 per cent on devices. They needed a writing programme that allowed them to combine the benefits of a digital tool with the essential cognitive, fine-motor, and stamina-building benefits of handwriting.
• varied teaching approaches and terminology. Nexus teachers are trained in different education systems around the world, resulting in varied approaches to writing instruction and terminology. This made it hard to build consistency from one year group to the next. Nexus wanted to upskill teachers and provide training for homeroom teachers, EAL teachers, and Learning Support staff.

‘We wanted a clearer progression of writing skills, a shared language for teaching writing, and a programme that could help us upskill teachers while also supporting multilingual learners and learners with additional learning needs,’ said Jessica Lindsay.

The solution

Nexus implemented Writer’s Toolbox for 475 students in years 3–6 in August 2025, complemented by diagnostic testing, face-to-face workshops, and coaching. They invested in professional development throughout the year, so teachers learned a new skill and focus area each term.

In August 2026, Nexus expanded the programme to include year 7 students.

The first diagnostic learning test identified writing strengths and gaps at an individual, class, and year-group level. It showed a significant gender difference in writing output, with boys writing much less than girls. This allowed Nexus to identify focus areas for the year ahead, including sentence length and precision.

‘This makes it much easier to set focused teaching priorities  rather than relying on general impressions of a learner’s writing,’ says Ms Lindsay.

The results for students

Writing strength increased by an average of 31.9%
Across the cohort of 475 students, each year saw an average of 31.9 per cent improvement in students’ writing strength. Years 3 and 5 saw the most significant growth, improving by 38.5 and 38.7 per cent respectively.

More students working above the expected standard
In the 2025–6 school year, Ms Lindsay taught a year 4 class as well as implementing Writer’s Toolbox across four primary year cohorts. She saw the impact of the programme first-hand, with more than 50 per cent of her class working above the expected standard by the end of the year.

‘I hadn’t achieved this kind of result in my 15 years of teaching,’ says Ms Lindsay. ‘It’s rare to say you’d have more than a handful of students working above the standard.’ By the end of the year, only two boys in her class were working towards the standard, and had  improved their structure and output significantly.

Less cognitive load
The four-box plan in Writer’s Toolbox gives learners one simple, consistent planning structure for both fiction and non-fiction. This reduces the cognitive load of deciding how to plan, and allows students to focus on organising their ideas.

More commitment and enthusiasm
Students have shown increasing enthusiasm for writing and sharing their work. They are motivated by the immediacy of the Writing Strength score, eager to improve their work and see how this impacts their overall score.

‘My favourite part was seeing students excited to share their writing,’ says Ms Lindsay. ‘They would write in the tool, then share aloud without fear of being judged for spelling or grammar.’

More purposeful editing 
Learners started to understand that editing is about improving the impact of a piece of writing, not simply about correcting spelling and punctuation. They moved from making surface-level corrections to considering the bigger picture and purpose.

Greater continuity
With Writer’s Toolbox, a Nexus learner encounters the same terminology with a homeroom teacher, EAL teacher, and learning support teacher, making it easy to move between different year groups and subjects. Ms Lindsay says that now the programme is being used for year 7 students, there is a stronger bridge between the primary and secondary years.

There have been unexpected benefits too. With so much reading embedded in Writer’s Toolbox, Ms Lindsay found students became more confident in their reading comprehension skills. She also ran workshops to teach parents about the tool, which led to parents being more invested in understanding how writing develops and how it can be improved.

The results for teachers

Connecting to the IB curriculum
When implementing Writer’s Toolbox, Ms Lindsay opted for a staged approach to ensure the programme was embedded naturally. She helped teachers connect the learning journey and writing strategies within Writer’s Toolbox with Nexus’s PYP Units of Inquiry.

‘I wanted teachers to understand that Writer’s Toolbox was not an additional programme that sat separately from our curriculum, but a resource that could strengthen the writing we were already teaching,’ she says.

Increased teacher confidence
After 12 months, teachers are more confident in teaching writing explicitly, and have a stronger understanding of how their work impacts the reader.

‘Teachers are increasingly confident in explicitly teaching the technical elements of writing and explaining the purpose behind different writing choices,’ says Ms Lindsay. ‘If you have confident teachers, then you’ll have confident writers.’

Differentiated instruction 
Writer’s Toolbox offers sufficient flexibility to suit Nexus’s IB curriculum, 70:30 blended learning approach, and differing needs of mainstream and EAL learners. Students learn the skills in Writer’s Toolbox, and the content in Units of Inquiry. This ensures that student writing is meaningful and connected to the curriculum.

‘The Learning Journey in Writer’s Toolbox can be adapted to the learner rather than simply matching their chronological year group,’ Ms Lindsay explains. ‘Teachers appreciate that the programme is flexible enough to complement our PYP curriculum rather than dictate it.’

Shared language
Ms Lindsay says having a shared language for writing has made a profound impact, uniting teachers from different educational backgrounds around one approach. ‘It has given teachers a common way to explain writing choices and has given learners a vocabulary for discussing and improving their own work,’ she says.

Support for EAL learners
Writer’s Toolbox can be adapted for EAL learners, teaching the fundamentals of writing without expecting them to access the programme in the same way as a fluent English speaker. Writer’s Toolbox resources give learners concrete ways to understand how a sentence is constructed and how it can be developed.

‘I have been particularly struck by how much the programme has engaged both teachers and learners. The teachers have valued the opportunity to deepen their own understanding of writing, while learners are genuinely enthusiastic about experimenting with sentence styles and improving their work,’ says Ms Lindsay.