Best Practices in the Teaching of Writing - Brevard Public Schools

How to Improve FCAT Writing Scores
• Integrate test preparation into class time.
• Teach writing as a literacy skill for life-long learning, not merely for
passing a test.
• Teach writing as a process, stressing the revision and editing stages.
Multiple revisions of one essay or story may be more helpful than
writing several essays or stories without revision.
• Require students to read and interpret a prompt independently, to
organize their thoughts and plan their writing, and to write an
elaborated (well-detailed and thorough) response.
• Share examples of student writing from each of the score points, and
ask students to give suggestions for improving the essay.
• Use holistic scoring to score student writing, and teach students to
score using anchor papers.
• Provide oral and written feedback to students, emphasizing all four
elements of FCAT writing: focus, organization, support, and control
of conventions.
• Use mini-lessons to emphasize the writer’s craft such as: leads and
conclusions, showing-not telling, anecdotal details, audience
awareness, and sentence combining.
• Score some drafts only on the particular craft element being studied,
not every aspect of the paper.
• Emphasize that high-quality writing has a clear focus, extensive
elaboration or detail, a mature command of language, and appropriate
sentence variety.
• Periodically provide time before the actual FCAT writing assessment
to rehearse “test conditions” and discuss student reflections of the
experience.
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