First Writing Assessment

This weekend I had the pleasure of reading my students' first major writing piece -- The Giver endings. They are really pretty good! (Nice work, Anita!) Since my goal is still to explore the most effective ways of giving writing feedback, I thought I'd blog about this first batch.

First, a summary of the assignment and process:
The kids always hate the ending of The Giver, so I give them the assignment of writing their own ending, using one of two jumping-off points in the book. They have to emulate Lois Lowry's narrative style (third person limited), genre (science fiction), and tone. We started by having a fish bowl discussion about the ending as Lowry wrote it. Then kids brainstormed, drafted, had peer conferences, and wrote a revision plan before revising. We had a mini lesson on revising, and I gave them a list of revision suggestions (make the beginning more exciting, change words, add description, add tension - arguments, challenges, problems - add dialogue, clarify confusing parts, remove boring parts, make ending more interesting). I was amazed with the time they took on revision. In my experience, kids usually race through this step, but they really got into it. Before editing, we had a mini lesson on punctuating dialogue (which was review from last year). I had to work one-on-one with a few kids who were having trouble, but most got it. We went into depth about dialogue that is interrupted by tags, and talked about varying the structure of dialogue. Kids edited, using a check list that I gave them (which included all of the conventions we've focused on so far this year), and then they peer-edited (but they weren't allowed to actually change anyone's writing -- just to make suggestions). Then we printed, stapled, and I went home to read.

Since changing my writing grade scale to M/N/S/O, I realized I no longer had to use a rubric that enumerated point value for everything. Still, I wanted to make sure that I gave feedback in a number of areas, so I made myself a template:

Writer:
Assignment: The Giver Ending
Ms. Paull’s feedback

Three things I liked:

One main suggestion:

Conventions to work on:

Grade (N/S/O): S

I put the template on my computer, and did not allow myself to hold a pen while reading. This kept me from marking up the kids' stories. Instead, I created a list for each kid of the conventions (mechanics) that they need to work on. I really liked doing this. It felt more useful that finding and marking each of their mistakes, but also addressed the goal of showing them what they need to work on. I also liked forcing myself to find 3 positive things to say, and to have the same number for each kid, regardless of the quality of their work. For the "one main suggestion," I limited myself to content and style, and left out mechanics (since that was already included elsewhere). When it came to deciding between N, S and O, it was still a bit difficult. I tended to give most kids S, with a few exceptional O's, and a few N's. I struggled with N's... There were definitely some pieces that "need improvement," but most of them also had some really positive things going on that I wanted to focus on. I'm still a bit torn about this... I think the more I use this grading scale, the more I'll feel comfortable distinguishing between an N and an S, and an S and an O.

If you're still reading, thanks! And happy new school year!