Assessing Writing by Nerissa Jarvis
Teachers use a variety of techniques/tools to evaluate students' writing in order to understand their abilities and give them focused feedback. Typical methods for evaluating student writing include:
Journals
There are different types of journals to use when assessing student writing. For instance, learning logs, diaries, response journals and double-entry journals. These provide an array of authentic sample pieces for the teacher to effectively assess a student's writing progress. Additionally, it allows for the teacher to zero in on areas of the writing pieces when giving feedback, with examples to show the student.
Writing portfolios
Teachers can gain a comprehensive understanding of their students' writing skills, monitor their development, and offer focused assistance to help them become more skilled writers by utilizing writing portfolios as a tool for assessment. An additional bonus for using writing portfolios, is including peer review exercises where students critique each other's writing samples. This encourages teamwork, critical thinking, and the growth of abilities for providing helpful criticism.
Rubric
Evaluating a
student's writing using a rubric, it's critical to develop a thorough and
understandable tool that details the precise standards for assessment. This can
involve components like language use, organization, conventions, and content.
Give students access to these standards so they can direct their own
evaluations.
Conclusion
It is simpler
for the teacher to confirm which of the six writing characteristics students
struggle with when they use these tools. Whether it concerns a single pupil or
the entire class. This might result in more effective lesson planning.
It is of the utmost importance that when teachers assess students' writing that it is done fairly and accurately. The three assessment methods of writing you mentioned are capable of achieving just that . Journals allow students to express their thoughts freely on a topic. This will subsequently give the teacher insight on the way in which the student write and provide adequate feedback. Moreover, writing portfolios is a great tool used for assessing writing because it tracks the growth of students' writing and they are more cognizant to what they have to work on to further improve their writing. In addition, a rubric is important to assess writing because it sets a standard and it makes students aware of what is expected of them.
ReplyDeleteAhh, ode to the dreadful aspect of teaching, assessment. As tedious as this task may seem, the above mentioned ways of assessing the writing of students is quite clear and comprehensive. I particularly like the idea of keeping a portfolio of student work, not only for teacher reference but as a means of each student tracking their progression as authors.
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