Writing+Assessment

Kelly Nolan Dr. McKool Writing Assessment April 19th, 2011 **  Introduction to Child    ** Jane is a very bright you writer. Throughout my time in her kindergarten classroom I have noticed her writing ability seems to be more advanced than most of the other students in her class with just a few students writing at a higher level than her. In looking through her files of all of the writing she has done in the writing workshop during previous units I was quite impressed with her work. During my observations of her in the writing workshop she seems to work quite independently and does the best she can with spelling. Jane is in the highest level reading group in her class and she also seems to perform very well on other literacy related activities such as worksheets that require you to write different sounds from words (mostly beginning and end). **  Purpose of Assessment    ** In our classrooms we are always watching children and assessing what they are doing. This assessment allows us to know where students are developmentally and how to get them to the next level. We use what we learn through assessment to adjust our instruction to meet the needs of all students. When we assess writing we are able to see what children understand about written language (O&G pg 78). When looking at samples previously created we look at things such as segmentation, orientation, spelling and content (McKool 4/7/11). Owocki and Goodman say that “As they evaluate, teachers focus on developing insight into both the process and the products of children writing.” We evaluate not only the product but the process because in order to be able to use the assessment to change our instruction we need to see what they are doing to create the pieces we are looking at. **  Methodology   ** For this assessment the methodology used was mostly observation of the student, conferencing with the student and looking through a file of her work throughout the year. With the permission of the teacher I looked though a folder containing a sample of the work she had produced that year. I selected a few different pieces from different times in the year ranging from November to January. I then took the pieces I had selected and talk to the student for a moment about the work. She said there was one piece she did not remember writing but she was able to read it to me and she recognized it as her work. She also told me that one if the samples I had chosen was her favorite assignment in writing workshop so far and that it was her favorite piece of work. **  Findings   ** Jane seems to have a good grasps on both mechanics and content when it comes to her writing. She understands that there should be spaces between words and that writing should have a top to bottom, left to write orientation. Jane understands most capitalization and punctuation also. She is seems to be a very good speller for a age spelling both library and cupcake correctly. According to the Monster Spelling Test Jane is spelling mostly in the transitional stage. She also knew that there was an apostrophe in the word can’t. I was very impressed by this. In the story she wrote on November 15th, 2010 her story has a beginning, middle and end. I also noticed that she seems to understand that illustrations should be representative of the story that she is trying to tell, which according to Lucy Calkins, is a very important concept for children to understand. When children understand this they understand that stories are about the writing and the ideas should come before the pictures and not just be created around the pictures (Calkins WW 27-33). One other very apparent thing in her writing that I feel it is important to note is that she begins every sentence in her stories with the word I. In my experience this seems to be very common for Kindergartners and even 1st graders. Teachers tell them they can use writing to write about their lives and there is no easier way to write about your life then with the use of “I” sentences. **  How to Use These Findings   ** Jane seems to be doing very well with her writing and I believe she is ready to take it to the next level. If I were Jane’s teacher I would begin by showing her how to write sentences beginning with things other than “I”. Right now she is writing very simple stories with simple ideas. I may do a read aloud and teach the class about plot and ask the students to try and write a fiction story with a plot instead of writing about something that happened to them in order to encourage the children to find other ways to begin their sentences. One other things that I would try and teach to Jane and a few other select students is dialogue, either in quotation marks with “Jane said” or with word bubbles within pictures. Finally I would make sure to keep Jane reading great works of literature with varied sentence structure to give her ideas about how authors use language to tell fiction stories.