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Torie Anderson

1. Conferring
One on one conferences with students give teachers the chance to talk to students about their writing as opposed to communicating with comments. Students become better writers with feedback and conferring with students is the chance for students to ask questions about their writing in addition to teachers being able to provide feedback in real time.

2. Self Evaluation with Rubrics and Questioning
Students can evaluate their own writing with a rubric and they can evaluate their views on writing with specific questioning. While students may not often evaluate themselves realistically (based on my personal experiences) with rubrics, the questioning can be used to ask them more specific questions about their opinions and beliefs surrounding writing and how they view themselves as writers.

3. On Demand Writing Practice
Provide students with opportunities to write on demand. The article by Ray suggests that students should be given an oppurtunity to write to a prompt every 6-7 weeks. Using this strategy can help reduce test anxiety by giving students the tools they need to be "test wise".

4. Writing Samples
Analyzing and evaluating writing samples is a great way for students to identify qualities they see in other writers works. It is also an oppurtunity for them to determine what "worked" and what "did not work" in the sample. Providing students with a variety of writing samples (low quality to high quality) can also help teachers teach grammar related skills.

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Sonja Engelsma
1. Rubics: Students need to know what they are being graded on and how they are being graded. Providing them with specific rubrics takes away those questions. Rubrics should be short and concise, not extremely detailed and overwhelming.
2. Self-Evaluation/Reflection: Students should be given the opportunity to self-evaluate their writing. I really like the idea of having the student provide a rationale for the grade they deserved on a given piece of writing.
3. Questioning: Traditional questioning includes drill and practice  and testing your knowledge type questions. We should be asking questions of history, action, and process. Questions help students discover who they are as a writer.
4. Conferring: This is an extremely important part of writing assessment. Conferring with students helps teachers see what students know and also gives time for students to reflect on their own writing.

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Gayle Lotterman

1.    Self-Evaluation: Use a rating scale so that students can identify strengths and weaknesses in their own work, rather than the assessment always being implemented by the teacher. This rating scale (or something similar) can help provide a basis for revision.

2.   Development: If the goal is for each student to develop a writing process that works for them, how can teachers help to serve that goal? I think the answer is in the assessment. Assessment needs to address the concerns of the teacher as a reader, but also address the way in which a writer has grown from piece to piece.

3.   Skills List: I liked the idea in the PowerPoint of a running record of skills and writings accomplished, so that students and teachers alike can look at that together to see any continuance of weaknesses, but also growth. This would help especially for those times when all you can do is look at a grade in the gradebook and not remember the reasoning behind that grade.

4.   Ultimate Purpose: I loved the little insert in the Ray chapter on Writing Assessment that said something about a writer believing the ultimate goal of her writing was to be published. I think establishing goals with students is important – students shouldn’t be concerned with pleasing the teacher or pleasing the people who are going to read the story (the Arthur video/story was a great example of how that goes wrong), but rather instead realizing that personal growth is more important than any of those things.

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies

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Jamie Grant
1.    Questioning

We should be asking questions of history, action, and process, as well as questions that overlap all three. Questions should help writer’s create a self-image that of a writer, encourage ways to write like a writer, create a purpose for writing, create members of a literate community, develop a sense of genre (or style of writing), and develop an understanding of how to prepare writing for an intended audience.

2.    Portfolio

Examples of included works are: show examples and explain their crafting techniques over time, show and explain a variety of notebook entries.

3.    Conferring

Conferring is a time that lends itself to using questions and discussing process. This time is used to question students to think like writers and to use our questions to help them identify as writers.

4.    Share time

This time is beneficial for self-reflection. This can be a very rich time in your curriculum if students are asking the questions of each other that you ask of them.

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies 

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies 

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Debra Rajaratne

1. Questioning:
I have not had my students start doing a writing assignment yet this year that I have had them turn in, but I will soon.  I am thinking about doing this as their assessment  for the employment writing (resume, cover letter, and thank you letters) when we do them.  I will ask  them what they are week at before they start, what they are doing well with while writing, and at the end, ask them what they would change if they were to do this writing type again.  They said that the questioning is based on the concepts of history (where they are going), support (What they are doing to support their writing life), and process (the specific steps in the process as they go through the publication process).

2. Conferring:
Teachers should question their student in a one on one fashion and about their writing. We should ask questions to the students about what they are doing as a writer. This time to share with the teacher adn with other classmates is extremely beneficial. I haven't gotten to practice this in the last marking period, but I hope to do more this next marking period and up until Christmas. It is extremely beneficial to have that time with the students and to have them think about their work. It really helps probe their thinking.

3. Evaluate:
If we are to evaluate our students' writing, we need to have a method.  The reading suggested this:
1. Ask questions of value.
2. Ask to see evidence of students' learning (things tried in drafts, etc) in their writing

3. Ask students to assign value to the work they have done in their writing.
Overall, students should be self-evaluating themselves but we should also have a scale that is a combination of score and narrative so that the descriptor has at least some information underneath the score to explain the grading.
-I need to have the students evaluating each other's writing more, but I struggle with having my students do this because my students have a deficit in things such as grammar, conventions, and capitalization and most likely, would never catch this mistake in their peers writing.

4. Rubrics and other evaluations should be very straight forward so that nothing is unclear.  I am working at making my evaluations easier for myself and maybe not so complex and hard for the students to understand.

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Assessing Students' Writing- Principles and Strategies

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Assessing Students' Writing- Principles and Strategies

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Megan Westlund
1. Self-Evaluation: Students should be involved in evaluating their writing. Because the process and the product should be graded, this is a powerful way to get students thoughts and ideas included in the evaluation of the process and the product. Ask students to rate themselves on how well they are learning from the mentor authors and explain why. (I've been trying to switch to this 'learning from author's' approach since starting Katie Ray Wood's book Study Driven.)
2. Questioning: Before this week's readings and powerpoint, I hadn't thought about the questions I ask can help build a writer's identify. This is powerful! Questions can show what I value to students so planning the questions I will ask while conferring could be really helpful. Should include questions of history (where they are now and where going as a writer), questions of action (what doing to support writing life), and questions of process.
3. Conferring: This is something I am trying to do more of this year. But the reading this week really challenged me to make this a priority during writing workshop. I also want to be more intentional about the questions I ask during this time. The questions I ask can create the curriculum and help teach students important ways to think about writing.
4. Mentor texts: I liked Nancy Atwell's idea of collecting examples of genres and using them to define the genres. My eyes have been opened to the power of using mentor texts for instruction.

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies

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Tya Ronk

Conferring— Taking the time to meet with each student one-on-on to discuss their writing and how they are choosing their topics and what they are thinking about when it comes to their writing. I loved this when we learned about it in a Reading Strategies class, and I still love it for a Writing Strategy.

Questioning—Through questions of history, action, and process the teacher can gain an insight to what the student may be thinking. Questioning where they have been, where they are now, and were they are going (history), as well as what kinds of things they are doing to support their writing lives (action), and the specific process they use to take ideas through publication (process) leads to a well thought out writer’s workshop.

Graphic Organizers—I find that my T1 students need this additional structure when it comes to writing. Especially when working towards writing a sentence. We break it down to one part at a time though a graphic organizer that helps them set up the sentence. For example, when going over caves, for our writing piece it was set up in a graphic organizer “Caves à are à ________.” and “Caves à have à 1.______ 2.______ 3._______.” This way when we transferred to our writing for our cave project they could follow the sample and come up with Caves are homes. or something of that nature. This worked for us because now when we write about water ways, they know that they can write sentences using the information from their graphic organizers.

Writers Notebooks and Prewriting pieces in evaluations. As previously discussed on other forums, evaluations and assessments should encompass the entire writing process not just the final piece. I believe that we should use writing notebooks, drafts, logs, and all the other pieces within the process of writing to create the final evaluation because it supports the whole student and how they have progressed as a writer.

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies 

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies 

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Ashley Mosley

1. Questioning- these should include: questions of history (where they have been as writers, where they are now, and where they want to go), questions of action (what are they doing to support their writing), questions process (questions during the process).
2. Self and peer reviews. Students should evaluate and draft their own writing, but also review each other's writings. A rubric or list of qualifications should be given to the students, so they know what to look for and include.
3. Model.  Model questioning, model self and peer review, model assessment.
4.  Keep in mind the process- not the end product. How do you want your students to grow as writers? Students should understand the process of writing- and that it is all about the process.

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Paul Balgenorth

1. Exit ticket
Students will have a question to answer at the end of class to show that the student is understanding the content.

2. Response cards

Index cards, signs, whiteboards, magnetic boards, or other items are simultaneously held up by all students in class to indicate their response to a question or problem presented by the teacher. Using response devices, the teacher can easily note the responses of individual students while teaching the whole group.

3. Student peer evaluation
Students will observe their partners when completing a task. This keeps the kids accountable for one another

4. Conferring
Students take time to choose their own prompts and discuss thinking on it.

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5 Writing Assessment Principles, Strategies and Activities  

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5 Writing Assessment Principles, Strategies and Activities  

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Stephanie S. Beam
1) Instead of using a rubric, think about creating a list of qualities that students should implement in their writing. This will become the basis for teaching and assessing students. (i.e. Create mini lessons around this list.)
2) Demonstrate the process of assessment to the students. For example, take a former student's work, and using an overhead projector or google doc, show students how you would grade it. It's important to take the mystery out of grading.
3) Provide feedback that is encouraging and lets students know that you are listening to what they are trying to say (i.e. "you say this so well" "I know exactly what you mean here" "keep working on this piece, it has a lot of potential." Writers need to feel heard.
4) When students want your feedback, have them ask you specific questions like Am I successful at creating a scary mood here or Am I using any clichés INSTEAD OF ASKING Is it good? Students need to learn to read their own work and it helps when teachers can structure their feedback based on what students need and want.
5) Have students participate in the assessment process by writing end notes that accompany their final drafts and provide a backstory detailing the writing moves that they made.

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies

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Amanda Watson
1. Conferring – I have not done enough of this yet this year!  I need to spend more time giving my students time to choose their own prompts and discuss their thinking about their writing.

2. Self-evaluation- I should have my students start to evaluate their own writing. Even though we discuss and I remind them that we need capital letters at the beginning of their sentences, complete ideas, and punctuation at the end, the majority of my students struggle to correctly compose sentences. If the students evaluate themselves it might help with their ability to compose sentences.

3. Peer evaluation – I think this would really benefit my students if I pair them up or even have them work in groups to edit their writings.

4. Rubric – This could be used two ways – I could have students evaluate themselves with the rubric as well as use the rubric to share my expectations for my students.

5. Using highlighters, pens, or sticky notes to have students edit their drafts – I think this would be very motivating to first graders!

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Jessica Pleak

1. Writing Examples. Before my students work on a paper, we analyze several papers as a class. We talk about why each paper was effective/ineffective, and what strategies they used to make a solid paper. Then, students will work as a small group to analyze a paper as an informal assessment to let me know if they are ready to start their own.
2. Chunks. When my students write a paper, they write one piece at a time. First, they complete a brain storming sheet. Then, they fill in the outline. Then, we work on the introductory paragraph together. I will teach each part of the paper and we will work on them as a whole. I assess each piece at a time, so that I can help students fix the smaller issues. If a student hands in a paper that has a mistake in every paragraph, they feel overwhelmed about fixing it.
3. Peer Reviews. Students will work together to analyze their peers' papers as they did with the papers in the samples. Based on their comments and suggestions, I can understand what they have grasped about the writing process, and what they still need clarity on.
4. One-on-one meeting. After my students complete their first draft and received peer reviewing, I will meet with them to talk about strengths and suggestions. This conversation serves as another informal assessment before they hand in their final.

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies

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Writing Assessment Principles and Strategies

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Tracy Garcia
1.  It's important to remember that the goal of assessment is to serve your students and not hurt them.  Think about the bigger picture.  Is your goal to provide your student with a letter grade that you can stick in a report card? Or is the ultimate goal to encourage your students' love of writing and to help them become better writers?
2. Assessment doesn't just happen when you read a student's writing, but it also happens throughout the class period. You can assess a student when he responds to a question asked during class, when he has a discussion with classmates, and when he asks questions ,as well.
3.  It is essential to ask a variety of questions while assessing a student during a writing workshop.  Ask questions of history, action, and process.
Questions of history: where have you been as a writer? Where are you now?  Where would you like to go as a writer?
Questions of action: what are you doing to encourage writing in your life?  How do you use your writer's notebook outside of class?
Questions of process:  What specific things are you doing to take a piece of your writing all the way to publication?
4. Create a writing evaluation that students can use to self-evaluate. This allows students to answer questions about their writing and their writing process.

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Julia Brown
1. Asking questions provides insight into students’ understanding of writing because it allows teachers to engage students with their thoughts and writing process. Only students can answer personal questions about their writing, and in asking these questions we are encouraging more in-depth analysis of the writing process and the hope of what is to come from it for each individual student.

2. When creating evaluations, it is necessary to include specific criteria for teachers to evaluate writing and students to evaluate themselves. Asking students to participate in certain activities or exercises in writing without an end goal may cause problems and not encourage students to value and put forth the greatest amount of effort possible.

3. When assessing and evaluating writing, there needs to be evidence present to back up the value put on the work. Explanations, artifacts, and questioning can be used to encourage this process. There also needs to be a variety of evaluations to make sure the grading is fairly done.

4. Expectations about their writing should always be made clear to students. Rubrics can be a great way to do this. Rubrics can be used by teachers and students to engage in the process of writing and how it is progressing.

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Lisa Mulder

Assessment is interpretive-Teachers can use various assignments to gather information about a student’s writing ability.  Not only do teachers use written information, but also students’ contributions to class discussions, as well as questions they ask.

Questions of history, action, and process.  First, ask the student to evaluate their growth as a writer.  Questions of action specifically ask what actions the students are doing to improve their writing.  Questions of process help students think through their process of taking pieces to publication.

Conferring is a great time to ask guiding questions to gain more information about gauging a student’s progress through the writing curriculum.  These questions also help students think for themselves as writers.

Using rubrics as a self-evaluation tools allow students to explain why they gave themselves a particular score and use the rubric terms to describe their evaluation of their writing.

Have students select artifacts to support their evaluations, often combined in portfolios.  Such artifacts include: writing logs, writing notebooks, drafts, and final writing pieces.

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Sorry Mary I forgot to sign in the first time my piece is: Writing Assessment Strategies via Katie Wood Ray

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Sorry Mary I forgot to sign in the first time my piece is: Writing Assessment Strategies via Katie Wood Ray

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by: Janelle Kramer

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Writing Assement Stragtegies via Katie Wood Ray:

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Writing Assement Stragtegies via Katie Wood Ray:

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Questioning: An important tool for assessing writing because is provides the teacher with critical information about how the student is feeling in regards to writing.
Teacher Led Questions: The goal of teachers questions should be that their students as writers are thinking about their work in those ways on a regular basis.
Evaluation: Another useful tool when thinking about assessment of writing; the idea is to get the teacher to look at the piece of writing and see "evidence" of what they (the students) are learning.
Student evaluation: Using a rubric created by the teacher, the students or their peers will evaluate a piece of writing and then share their reasoning to support which section on the rubric they selected a piece to fall. Peer evaluations can be a very useful term of assessment because it still provides teacher with feedback on learning but it also allows students to look at their writing collaboratively.

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Darreth Rice
1.  Questioning:  the role of questioning in a writing conference can guide the structure of the conference and help shape the assessment.  In Katie Wood Ray's book, she listed several questions that a teacher could ask to get the student to process through how they came about their ideas, how they revise, etc.  These can be really beneficial ways to assess the process of writing and it comes across as non-threatening because it is a conversation or conference between the student and the teacher.
2. Conferring:  using conferences to help guide the assessment of the process and not the product.  This can be done using those beneficial questions listed above.  If teachers used conferences as a way of measuring student growth as a writer, I feel more students would enjoy writing and feel better about themselves as writers.
3.  Rubrics:  Using simple rubrics that the students help shape.  The reason why Katie Wood Ray said to use simple rubrics was because of the flexibility in using that same rubric in other areas.    I think rubrics are great and do help guide students as to what they should incorporate into their work without it becoming a complete checklist.  I feel with a rubric there is more room for discussion, as where a checklist is more cut and dry.
4. Having students give input into what should be assessed and how. I loved the point the Katie Wood Ray made about allowing students to be part of the rubric creation. She took it a step farther than simply self-assessing. She had students brainstorm and decide what elements of the writing should be assessed and then what would each level look like. To me this feels like the collaboration we would want to shoot for in a writing culture. I wish I would have had the forethought to run my writing workshops like this, instead of being caught up in what my district wanted from students as writers.