Do you give any quizzes or tests to assess students’ use of the grammatical concepts you teach or do you use the students’ writing only?
My kids were getting knocked over with so many assessments, I tried to give them quizzes as little as possible. While you’re correct that most concepts can and should be assessed in children’s writing, I know sometimes we need a shorter assignment. Instead of a quiz on compound sentences (after lots of modeling and teaching), I ask students to write a sentence about our reading today in a compound sentence. An important idea, something that stuck with them, conflict or a character’s actions. And before I “quiz” like this, they will have done this with a partner first, and I will have given corrective feedback. I don’t like to “quiz” them until they know it. Because until they know it I haven’t really taught it yet, have I?
Do you have any books you would recommend for assessment techniques for writer’s workshop?
I’d recommend Mark Overmeyer’s book What Student Writing Can Teach Us. http://tinyurl.com/2exkjxq
I have a dilemma about correct models. Some K-1 teachers write this on chart paper: I w f a w. Only the initial sounds for the words. The correct model, I went for a walk, is not demonstrated. Shouldn’t they only use correct models?
I think your question is one of purpose and intention. The kindergarten and first grade teachers are not teaching correct conventions, they are instead working on the early part of the writing process to get kids writing. They are giving them a strategy to start representing their thoughts with letters. Initial sounds are a good start for our youngest writers. As I am sure they do, they move forward and add ending sounds and medial sounds as they progress, so by the middle of first grade they aren’t still doing the same lesson, especially if this was already done in kindergarten.
I was speaking on teaching grammar and editing, not getting kids to start writing and recording ideas, moving from pictures to words. That’s a very different purpose. When I spoke of using models, I am referencing in part, Writing Next research which is for grades 4-12, as well as Eric Jensen’s research on visuals and peripherals. Lucy Calkins and Patricia Cunningham do argue we use the method your teachers are using to get our youngest writers started. I am sure the children are being immersed in correct models with big books and other writing the teachers do. I am sure the teachers are using those reading experiences and other shared writing experiences to write correctly in front of their students.
