Do you find it difficult to assess your students’ writing growth? Sometimes it can be very hard, especially when trying to compare apples and oranges (for example narrative and opinion, etc.). Here are some quick tips for assessing your students’ writing growth!
So, what can a teacher do to get a good picture of a student’s writing growth?
In the first 2 or 3 weeks of school get an informal sample of each type of writing from your students. This DOES NOT need to be a big production…
- Narrative Sample: What is your favorite memory from this summer?
- Opinion Sample: Do you think we should have year round school? (For a fun opinion writing launch lesson- take a look at this idea!)
- Informational (Expository) Sample: Ask your students to write a how-to piece about how to pack a cold lunch for school. (For additional tips on Informational Writing, check out this blog post!)
Tips: Be sure to label each sample with the date. You will also want a place to keep all of your students’ writing samples. A hanging file box works really well.
Next, as you teach each unit of writing try to get two samples of your students’ writing. Ideally grab a sample very early on in your unit. This does not need to be a published piece, or even a full writing piece. Maybe you are working on sequencing in your narrative writing, just collect your students’ independent writing practice from that day.
You will definitely want to collect a sample from the very end of each writing unit (narrative, opinion, informational, etc.). You and your students have put in lots of hard work during the course of the unit and you will want to show all of that growth!
Finally, as your students writing will continue to improve as they grow throughout the year, I recommend collecting a sample of each type of writing in the last month of school.
- Narrative Sample: What is your most memorable moment from the school year?
- Opinion Sample: What is the best/worst thing about summer?
- Informational (Expository) Sample: Ask your students to write a how-to piece about how to be successful in your classroom. This is something you could share with your incoming class of students at the beginning of the next year!
Benefits of Keeping Student Writing Samples Throughout the Year
Great for parent conferences/ student-led conferences! What is better than showing parents their child’s work? It is also so nice to already have work on hand so you are not scrambling to collect work to show during conferences.
Since writing can be very subjective to grade, by saving student writing samples, you will have student work to back up your grading. You can also photocopy student samples to use as anchor papers for grading. Having anchor papers can make it easier to grade student writing.
Here are a few resources that might help you when collecting writing samples…
Hope these tips can assist you in assessing your students’ writing growth throughout the year!
