Improving Student Writing Skills - cse crafts

Improving Student Writing Skills
Teachers generally communicate holistic assessment
with written comments that tend to be proportional to
the length of the assignment. If you use this method,
make sure to make notes about each student’s skills for
use in later lessons. In addition, you may choose to combine
this holistic technique with a predefined number of
points taken for conventions issues, such as misspelled
words. Overall, the holistic assessment method is a highly
traditional approach, although it lacks the framework
for both creating an objective measure of performance
and breaking this performance into its components for
differentiating instruction.
Portfolio Assessment
Portfolio assessment is the process of collecting student
work over a period of time and using it to make conclusions
about overall performance (Wortham, Barbour, &
Desjean-Perrotta, 1998). The method of assessing the
assignments within the portfolio is up to you. Portfolio
assessment works well with the outlined model for the
writing workshop/writing process, as students should
already be keeping assignments organized in their writing
folders. If students release their writings into the
world, such as letters to state representatives, magazine
submissions, or notes to their grandparents, ask them to
make a photocopy for inclusion in their portfolio.
This method has the advantage of making it easier to spot
trends. Perhaps on an assignment-to-assignment basis,
you would miss a student’s lack of a concluding sentence
(or paragraph); but in a portfolio, this will be a more obvious
area for improvement as you notice that the lack of a
conclusion is consistent. Depending on your school and
district, you may be able to use portfolio assessment in
place of traditional grading. If this is the case, you will
likely be required to “boil down” a student’s portfolio to
areas of strength and weakness, which you can include
on a cover sheet.
70
http://www.books-foru.blogspot.com