Ch. 10 Make Assessment Count

One of the first statements that I found interesting in this chapter was that placing students on a writing continuum can sometimes be helpful or perhaps a waste of time. We as teachers need to make sure that we are spending our efforts teaching effectively and not just trying to stick kids into a labeled writing stage. I also agree that we should not even attempt to score all students writing but to give them plenty of writing opportunities where they feel comfortable taking risks. I think that we must remind ourselves not to get too hung up on scoring writing with the six trait rubric. Scoring with a rubric is fine to occasionally assess a piece of writing however, we need to keep in mind the individual growth in a student that sometimes may not be fully represented in a rubric score. Finally, I continue to work on having the kids so some self assessing of their own writing. This has been difficult because after they've worked on piece they tend to think it's perfect! I think this goes along with increasing expectations for self editing their own writing. All in time!