Writing Assessment

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Writing Assessment

• Lynn Denault
• ldenault_at_rccdsb.edu.on.ca

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• Assessment AS learning
• Assessment OF learning
• Assessment FOR learning

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Assessment FOR learning

• Assessment for learning involves adjusting
  teaching as needed while the learning is still
  taking place.
• Assessment information should be used to adapt
  instruction to meet student needs.

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• This involves a shift of attention from teaching
  to learning.
• The emphasis is on what the students are getting
  out of the process rather than on what teachers
  are putting into it,

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• About seven years ago, Paul Black and Dylan
  Wiliam found that students taught by teachers who
  used assessment for learning achieved in six or
  seven months what would otherwise have taken
  a year (1998).

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• In a classroom that uses assessment to support
  learning, the divide between assessment and
  instruction blurs.

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John Van de Walle

• Quality instruction and appropriate assessment
  need not be different activities.
• Assessment and instruction should become nearly
  indistinguishable.
• We can assess as we provide opportunities for
  learning. The search for quality assessment
  tasks is simultaneously a search for quality
  learning tasks.
• THEY ARE ONE AND THE SAME!

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• By thinking more carefully about the questions
  they ask in class, teachers can check on
  students understanding while the students are
  still in the class rather than after they have
  left, as is the case with grading.

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• To be effective, feedback needs to cause
  thinking.
• Grades dont do that.
• Scores dont do that.
• And comments like Good job dont do that
  either.

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• What DOES cause thinking is a comment that
  addresses what the student needs to do to
  IMPROVE.

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• Focus on
• TEACHER MODERATION (SHARED MARKING)

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Resources

• Exemplars Gr. 1-8 Min. of Ed.
• Write Traits Nelson, K-8
• Whats new???? Kindergarten!!!
• Scholastic (Ruth Culham) resources
• Ontario Writing Assessment (OWA)

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What is the Ontario Writing Assessment
(OWA)?Thomson Nelson

• an assessment tool that provides on-demand
  writing tasks specific to each grade level from
  SK-Grade 8 samples of levelled student work
  (EXEMPLARS or ANCHORS) with rationale
• 3 writing tasks per grade at beginning, middle
  and end of the school year a variety of text
  formats over the course of SK-Grade 8
• the tasks provide students with opportunities to
  write independently for an intended purpose and
  audience
• we can more easily make confident decisions when
  analyzing and assessing students writing

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What is the OWA?

• assists teachers to LEVEL student work in line
  with the Ontario Achievement Charts 4 levels and
  4 categories KU, Thinking, Communication and
  Application (revised Language 1-8, 2006)

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What is the OWA?

• includes class assessment tracking sheets,
  writing self-assessments, attitude surveys,
  planning guide for next steps and rubrics
• 23 writing strategies explained and organized to
  target areas of need in the 4 categories (Page
  108)

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Why now?

• focus on PLCs and teacher moderation (shared
  marking) in the province
• OWA tasks correspond to all of the overall and
  specific expectations in our revised Language 1-8
  document
• works in conjunction with Write Traits and other
  assessments

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• The more writing that students do and the more
  success they have in their writing, the more they
  will want to write and the better writers they
  will become.
• A Guide to Effective Literacy Instruction, Gr.
  4-6
• 
  Volume 6 -Page 8

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• The writing you get out of your students can only
  be as good as the classroom literature that
  surrounds and sustains it.
• Fletcher and Portalupi Craft Lessons
• Teaching Writing K-8