For never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty
tender it. Shakespeare
What does “good” student writing look like? In
order to find out, each student in grades two through eight
at our school was asked to respond to two out of three common
writing prompts. Students could write about a favorite sport
or activity, an exciting life event, or a place they would like
to visit on vacation. The prompts were administered on two different
occasions, and each time, students were allowed thirty minutes
to write. The resulting samples were subsequently ranked by
the entire faculty (and parent representatives from our curriculum
council) as being either below, above, or at standard for each
grade level.
This process, although time-consuming, helped us to reach a
clearer and more consistent understanding of our school’s
expectations at each grade level. A booklet was compiled which
included an “above standard” and a “standard”
writing sample for each grade level. In addition to reproducing
these in their original thirty-minute draft format, typed or
rewritten final versions were also included to demonstrate the
improvement from first cut to “publication.” Our
hope was that these models of actual student work would provide
tangible examples for students, give parents a sense of what
can reasonably be expected from their children, and aid teachers
in assessment.
As a teacher, I found the process to be extremely valuable,
for it somewhat mitigated the loneliness and subjectivity of
writing assessment. At our small rural school, there is only
one teacher per grade level -- now at least I had a sense of
how other teachers might judge the kind of student work I had
been seeing. The question, however, remained: what exactly do
we mean by “standard”? It appeared to me that for
some of the grade levels, there simply were no “above
standard” samples. Many were ranked as such only because
they were being viewed relative to others which were inadequate.
I concluded that this was rather like grading “on the
curve”; its value was to give us a snapshot of what we
were dealing with, rather than an ideal.
And so from whence does the ideal emerge? Certainly as teachers
of writing, we have an overall sense of correctness and quality
which we must temper based upon the realistic capabilities of
children at each stage. We also have formal language arts standards
from the state which tell us that at grade six, for example,
a student should be able to “organize thoughts and information
for clear and coherent writing.” We are further told that
this standard should be evidenced by the student demonstrating
“competence in organizing, structuring, developing and
presenting writing based on a given topic”; including
“relevant facts, details, and descriptive words”;
and “excluding extraneous details and inconsistencies.”
I think, too, we need to factor in an element of what we know
about the individual student writer, not to compromise the ideal,
but to reflect essential values such as effort.
Thus came the rubric. There is nothing so useful as a score
sheet to quantify that which is not by nature quantifiable.
A good rubric renders the evaluation tangible, crisp, and useful.
It puts the Jello in Tupperware with handles, to use some brand
name metaphors. The performance indicators outlined in the adopted
standards -- along with everything I know intuitively about
writing -- can be organized into the following four components:
Content and Style
Structure and Organization
Spelling, Grammar, and Usage
Presentation
These form the basis of the middle school rubric developed
and in use at our school. Students may earn 1 to 5 points per
section, with a total of 17 - 20 points yielding an A, 13 -
16 a B, and so forth. The complete rubric is included at the
end of this discussion. It is an intentionally balanced evaluation
format in which a student who is weak in spelling, for example,
can make up points by showing thought and creativity, or a student
who lacks creativity can compensate by having presented a work
which shows effort and care. A truly outstanding piece of work,
of course, would have high point values in all areas. Because
writing is a process, students are encouraged to revisit, rewrite,
and improve their written work based upon teacher comments and
the scoring of the rubric. The improved grade on an assignment
that is redone and resubmitted is calculated into the student’s
overall average.
Writing assessment no longer seems overwhelming to me, and
in fact, it has become an important part of instruction, as
all good assessment should be. Tangible work samples show what
kids can do and have done (although my hope is to get better
and better models over time). Specific standards and performance
indicators (and these should be very familiar to the students)
offer guidelines. And a comprehensive rubric is a tool for teacher
and student.
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