Assesments of Student Writing: What's Important?

Before our discussion on writing characteristics, I always thought that a good writer would have neat handwriting and NO mis-spelled words. From our last two classes on assesments of student writing, I found out that I was in fact very very wrong. I feel that my bias' lead me to think what I did because of what I was taught throughout my school career. I can clearly remember my teachers' main focuses being neat handwriting and correctly spelled words. Sadly, that bias followed me until now.

When assesing student writing, I have learned that you can not judge writing only on neatness but to look at the bigger picture.

• When going through a students writing, it is important to note whether or not the story has a focus and is organized.


• Does the story have a beginning, middle and an end?


• Is there a squence of ideas?


• Does the writer elaborate and support those ideas?


• Do the words vary throughout the writing?


• Does the story have sentence variety? (Example: compound, complex, and/or simple sentences)


• Does the writer use appropriate capitalization, punctuation, and spelling?


• How is the writers word usage?


• Does the writer space their words?

In class, we did just focus on writing characteristics, but we also looked at how to asses a students spelling to tell which stage they are in as a writer. Those stages included:

• Precommunicative


• Semiphonestic or prephonetic


• Phonestic


• Transitional Stage


• Conventional or Correct Spelling

From our class, my entire view on what to look for in a good writer has changed drasticlly. When our class first began the lesson on student assesment in writing, Regina had passed out 3 smaples of student writing. Quickly going through them, I spotted Chelsea's work and assumed hers was the best because it was the neatest and had very few mis-spelled words. I looked at Scott's next and again assumed his wasn't the best because of his neatness and mis-spelled words. After assesing the three writing samples, I found that Scott was actually a stronger writer then Chelsea when it came to many different categories.

I learned that it is extremly important for students to vary their writing styles. For example; A student shouldn't just have simple, declarative writing. We, as future teachers, can help students gain knowledge in writing by looking at the weaknesses of the child(ren) and doing certain activities/lessons to help them better understand writing style. In class we talked about different ways to help the children understand. Some of those ideas were: going over different types of sentences, go over what a beginning, middle, and end of a story consists of, and how to make a writing read friendly.

All of these ways helped me so very much and from this lesson, I will be able to now look for what really makes a good writer.