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9: Grading
and Evaluating Writing
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 | Does he/she use a rubric or set of
explicit criteria? Does he/she grade holistically? Use an analytic scale such as Washington
State’s 6-trait scoring? What are his/her rationale behind the grading system he/she uses? |
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| Does he/she use different rubrics
or criteria for different types of writing? |
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| Do students have input into how
writing is graded? |
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| Does he/she give split grades (content-mechanics)? |
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| Do students play a role in grading? Do they grade their own or each others’ writing? |
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| How do teachers track progress in writing over the semester? Do they use portfolios?
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3. On the discussion site, describe your mentor teacher’s system for grading
at the start of the week
in the "Lesson 9" discussion.
4. By mid-week, read everyone’s postings and respond. Are you seeing any patterns or
interesting approaches in the teachers’ grading strategies? Which
strategies, approaches do you find particularly useful? What
concerns you most about grading? Let's share ideas and concerns.
Activities
Part 2: Large-scale Evaluation
The Idaho Direct Writing Assessment
On
audio?
What is the IDWA? The IDWA is a writing assessment test that asks students to
write, in English, to a prompt, within a limited period of time. The test
is not designed to assess how well a person writes or is capable of witting.
It is designed to test only whether a person can follow direction and
write in English on a specific topic at a level appropriate to grade
level. The test does not intend to measure overall writing ability;
rather, it tests how well a student writes on that day, in that time, to
that prompt. The purpose of the assessment is to give feedback to the
state, school districts, classrooms, and individual students about the effectiveness
of the writing program.
In
the past, the Idaho Direct Writing Assessment was administered to all Idaho pubic
school students in grades 4, 8, and 11 annually. Currently, the test is
being piloted for grades 5 and 9 instead. The future of the eleventh-grade
test is currently uncertain.
1. Find a teacher in your school who
has administered the IDWA and interview him/her. Find out what the
IDWA is and how he/she prepares students for the test. Take notes in
your journal.
2. Interview a sample of
students in your school about their experiences with the IDWA. What prompts did they get?
What did they like, not like, about taking the test? Take notes in
your journal.
3. Go to the language arts site
of the State Department of Education ( http://www.sde.state.id.us/instruct/langarts/)
and click on "8th grade pencil box addendum." Here you
will find a manual of materials on the 8th-grade IDWA: the rubric for
scoring, the prompt for 2001, samples of essays and how they were
scored. (You may wish to print the rubric; the fine print makes the
PDF hard to read.) These materials are available for teachers
preparing their students for the IDWA.
4. Discussion: Now that
you've learned the what-why-how of the IDWA, what are your thoughts? Is there anything about the scoring system, the rubric, the prompts that
you might change?
Let's share concerns, ideas in the "Lesson 9" discussion in Blackboard
by mid-week. Be sure you've done your research before you
enter this site!
5. Reflection paper: From what you’ve seen and read, what
grading system might you use in your own class? Outline a prospective
system for evaluating writing that you might use during your next semester
of internship. Will you use rubrics, like those used in the IDWA? Another
strategy? Provide a rationale for your grading system (refer to
readings, observations in your rationale). Turn this one-page paper into the
Assignment Dropbox on
Blackboard under
"Lesson 9 Reflection" by the end of the week.
The document
should be a Word97 or higher format, 12 point legible text.
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Overview
