Saturday, November 6, 2010

Chapter 4: Assesssing Children's Writing

Assessment should focus on the writers themselves (Anderson, 2005. cited in Tompkins, p. 76). Its purpose is to document children's growth, inform their achievement, to guide writing, to substantiate that children meet grade-level standards and to evaluate the program (Tompkins, p. 76). Assessment can be formal like mandated writing assessment and informal like observing, conferencing, collecting samples, and keeping records. Hessler et.al. (2009) offers 20 manageable ways to assess student writing more objectively, saying that "teachers should use a variety of assessments: formal and informal, snapshot and whole-piece, process and product, and timed and untimed.

Ja-eun emphasized advantages of self-asessment in her blog saying that children assume responsibility for their writing and products through self-assessment. She cited Curtz to state the difficulties that students new to self-assessment method may face in class. In this sense, to enhance the benefit of self-assessment, teachers should be well prepared and sensitive to students' needs.

Reference
Hessler, T., Konrad, M. & Alber-Morgan, S. (2009). Assess student writing. Intervention in School and Clinic, 45(1). 68-71. Retrieved from
http://isc.sagepub.com.libproxy.lib.csusb.edu/content/45/1/68.full.pdf+html



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