Writing to Learn: The New Georgia Writing Assessment

1. Writing to Learn: The New Georgia Writing Assessment Elaine Roberts, Ph.D.

2. Helping Students Understand Purposes for Writing to Learn Helps students: • think about important issues, synthesize material, develop opinions, and learn critical thinking skills • make connections between what they are learning to what they know and have experienced • develop a sense of learning through writing and valuing/sharing their thoughts • balance the structure of expository writing and the craft of their own writing Helps teachers: • assess students’ thinking, clarify information, and plan instruction

3. Connections

4. Writing Sample 3rd GraderConnections to Book: Freckle Juice by Judy Blume Andrew Marcus feels about his teacher that he might some times feel in barest because when he was not paing utintion when they called his reading group. My connetion is that I’m oppisit because I don’t want freckles. My other connection is I used to pass notes. How did Andrew feel when he fell out of his chair and every one laughed at him? He probley felt weak and sad because no one stop laughing at him.

5. Grade 3 Portfolio Writing Assessment • First assessment on March 19-30, 2007 • Includes analytic scoring guide aligned to GPS • Four types of writing assessed: • Writing in Response to Literature (Text to text, text to writer, or text to outside world-making connections, asking questions, and writing using the text as a model) • Narrative Writing (Relating a Personal Experience and Creating an Imaginative Story) • Informational Writing (Reports info on a topic based on research from a variety of sources) • Persuasive Writing (Clear position/opinion with examples, anecdotes and/or details)

6. Grade 3 Portfolio Analytic Scoring System (Domains and Components)

7. Emergent Literacy Pre-K-2 Sulzby’s Stages of Early Emergent Writing: • Drawing as writing • Scribble writing • Letter-like units • Non-phonetic letter strings • Copying from environmental print • Invented spelling • Conventional spelling

8. Sulzby Stages of Early Emergent Reading K-2 • Attending to pictures, not forming stories • Attending to pictures, forming oral stories • Attending to pictures, forming written stories • Attending to print

9. ELA 4R4 The student reads aloud, accurately familiar material in a variety of genres of the quality and complexity illustrated in the sample reading list, in a way that makes meaning clear to listeners. • The student: uses letter-sound knowledge to decode written English and uses a range of cueing systems (e.g. phonics and context clues) to determine pronunciation and meaning • Uses self-correction when subsequent reading indicates an earlier miscue (self-monitoring and self-correcting strategies) • Reads with rhythm, flow, and meter that sounds like everyday speech (prosody)

10. ELA4W2 The student demonstrates competence in a variety of genre’s • The student produces informational writing (e.g. report, procedures, correspondence) That: • Engages the reader by establishing a context, creating a speaker’s voice, and otherwise developing reader interest. • Frames a central question about an issue or situation. • Creates an organizing structure appropriate to a specific purpose, audience, and context. • Includes appropriate facts and details. • Excludes extraneous details and inappropriate information. • Uses a range of appropriate strategies, such as providing facts and details, describing or analyzing the subject, and narrating a relevant anecdote. • Draws from more than one source of information such as speakers, books, newspapers, and online materials. • Provides a sense of closure to the writing.

11. Compare/Contrast • Cause—leads to—Effect • CCC—leads to—E • C—leads to--EEE Paragraph: Introduce cause or effect Describe event combined with other events that begin to cause the effect Build explanation of reason for significance of cause/effect. Closure (Combs, 2003)

12. Matrix to Connect GPS to Content Area

13. Artifacts: GPS Self-Monitoring Progress

14. QAR Strategy Reading Quest Website http://www.readingquest.org for comprehension strategies

15. Grade 5 Analytic Writing Assessment • First assessment, March 7 & 8, 2007 • Students will be given either and informational, persuasive, or narrative writing topic as defined by the GPS • Topics will be released after each test administration and will become part of the practice topic bank

16. Inquiry Projects for Writing to Learn: Observations and Interviews • Observe, study, and write about observations/interview. • Example: Students observe a teacher mini-lesson with a think aloud about poetry writing in response to expository texts, then students study poems and compile a list of features of the text, vocabulary, and author’s style. Finally, students write a poetry responses to an expository text and discuss the features, vocabulary, and writing style of the poem and connect it to meaning.

17. Grade 5: Four Domains and Components • Ideas (main idea, supp details, relevance of detail, depth of dev, awareness of genre) • Organization (focus, sequence of ideas, grouping of ideas within paragraphs, genre-specific strategies, transitions) • Style (word choice, audience awareness, voice, sentence variety, genre-specific strategies-dialogues, suspense) • Conventions (sentence formation, usage, mechanics) Linked to a common reporting scale to compare scores over time; Scoring rubrics are available online

18. All grade 5 students will take the test on the same day with one day for make-up • Testing time will be 120 minutes (sessions of 60 minutes each) • Systems have flexibility for time of day to administer each of the sessions • No extra time will be allowed except as specified in an IEP or TPP • Dictionaries will no longer be allowed except for ELL students to use a translation dictionary (paper copy only) if specified in the TPP

19. Grade 8 Writing Assessment • First operational assessment will be January, 2007 • Students will be given either an expository topic or a persuasive topic as defined by the GPS • Topics will be released after each test administrations and become part of the practice topic bank

20. Grade 8 Four Domains and Components • Ideas (controlling idea, supporting ideas, depth of dev, sense of completeness, relevance of detail, awareness of genre) • Organization (focus, sequence of ideas, grouping of ideas within paragraphs, genre-specific strategies, transitions) • Style (word choice, audience awareness, voice, sentence variety, genre-specific strategies) • Conventions (sentence formation, usage, mechanics) Students take the test on the same day with one make up day Testing time is 100 minutes with no extra time except for IEP and TPP plans ELL students will be allowed to use a paper only translation dictionary if specified in the TPP

21. “ I never have to watch television because all of their “creative” pieces are rehashes of sitcoms, action shows, and made for TV maudlin melodramas.” (p. 121)

22. GHSWT • First administration will be Fall, 2007 (Sept. 26-27) • Same four domains (Ideas, Organization, Style, and Conventions-same component & descriptors as grade 8) • The new assessment will assess persuasive writing as defined in the GPS (writing prompts will be released after administration for practice topic banks) • Testing time will be 100 minutes (no extra time except for IEP and TPP plans) • ELL student will be allowed to use a translation dictionary in paper format if specified in the TPP Assessment and instructional guides will be available in summer, 2007 (scoring rubric and sample anchor papers for each score point in each domain at www.doe.k12.ga.us testing)

23. SCSh6 and Persuasive Writing Students will communicate scientific investigations and information clearly. a. Write clear, coherent laboratory reports related to scientific investigations. b. Write clear, coherent accounts of current scientific issues, including possiblealternative interpretations of the data. c. Use data as evidence to support scientific arguments and claims in written or oralpresentations. d. Participate in group discussions of scientific investigation and current scientificissues.

24. High School Physics SCSh9 Students will enhance reading in all curriculum areas by: • a. Reading in All Curriculum Areas • • Read a minimum of 25 grade-level appropriate books per year from a variety ofsubject disciplines and participate in discussions related to curricular learning inall areas. • • Read both informational and fictional texts in a variety of genres and modes ofdiscourse. • • Read technical texts related to various subject areas. • b. Discussing books • • Discuss messages and themes from books in all subject areas. • • Respond to a variety of texts in multiple modes of discourse. • • Relate messages and themes from one subject area to messages and themes inanother area. • • Evaluate the merit of texts in every subject discipline. • • Examine author’s purpose in writing. • • Recognize the features of disciplinary texts.

25. High School Physics Continued • c. Building vocabulary knowledge • • Demonstrate an understanding of contextual vocabulary in various subjects. • • Use content vocabulary in WRITINGand speaking. • • Explore understanding of new words found in subject area texts

26. Science SP3 Students will evaluate the forms and transformations of energy. Analyze, evaluate, and apply the principle of conservation of energy and measure thecomponents of work-energy theorem by: • describing total energy in a closed system. • identifying different types of potential energy. • calculating kinetic energy given mass and velocity. • relating transformations between potential and kinetic energy. • b. Measure and calculate the vector nature of momentum. • c. Compare and contrast elastic and inelastic collisions. • d. Demonstrate the factors required to produce a change in momentum. • e. Analyze the relationship between temperature, internal energy, and work done in aphysical system. • f. Analyze and measure power.

27. Feedback Creating time! • Rubrics (Integrated GPS and open ended rubrics for student input) • Peer journals for writing (ELL-double entry journals) • Entry slips

29. Assignments Go beyond knowledge level – “telling assignments” (Indriasano & Paratore, 2005)

30. Read-Write Cycle (Miller & Calfee, 2004)

31. Future Writing Goals • Think Pair Share

32. References • Indrisano, R., & Paratore, J. (2005). Learning to write, writing to learn: Theory and research in practice. International Reading Association. • Combs, M. (2003). Readers and writers in the middle grades, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. • Tompkins, G. (2004). Teaching writing: Balancing process and product, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.