Chapter 10: Make Assessment Count
There are two different ways to assess student writing. Assessment of learning is a way of assessing by standardized measures of assessments to check whether or not students are progressing. Assessment of learning is rarely used for daily instruction. Assessment for learning is a classroom-based assessment to inform parents, teachers, and students about student’s progress for a specific purpose of improving student writing.
One way of assessing is by using rubrics. A rubric is a set of criteria for what needs to be included in a piece of writing. A content rubric provides criteria to frame writing and to define the task. An evaluation rubric provides criteria explaining how the writing will be rated or scored. Rubrics can be formal or informal. It is important to not apply rubrics in every piece of writing. When it comes to using a rubric, the author says to use professional common sense. It is not advisable to neither apply rubrics to all writing nor score all writing.
There are several things to expect from students writing every single day. As a teacher, it is vital that we schedule writing everyday for 20 to 30 minutes. This even includes whole class share at the end of a lesson. The whole class share improves the quality of student’s writing. One thing I found beneficial is to assess the students writing everyday. This does not include a long process but can be very simple. I have always found it difficult to assess how the students are writing. I can do the assessments for learning through one-on-one conferences, whole-class shares, conversations, summaries, and evidence of revision and editing.
I couldn't wait to get to this chapter. I was hoping to learn how to get a handle and keep a handle on how my students are progressing, and still be able to get a little sleep at night. I loved her point that not everything needs to be graded, and that we assess to inform instruction, not just to get a grade in the gradebook.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that assessing writing is a challenge because we do not want to penalize students who struggle with spelling and grammar, but have excellent content. I love how you talk about using rubrics as a way to show students the expectations they need to achieve. I know that I need to incorporate more rubrics when assessing writing, but I do love how you pointed out that we do not need to always use rubrics nor grade every piece of writing.
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