Assessment, again? Assessment! Again!

9/25/2020

OVERVIEW: I don't know a single person in a classroom--student or teacher--who doesn't feel that it all comes down to the assessment. For most students, that's a negative, but, as Inoue argues, it most certainly doesn't have to be that way. And, in his plea in Chapter Five to commit to antiracist writing assessment, he tells us exactly what is at stake.

And so here we are, talking about writing assessment again this week. Clark's chapter, pretty clear cut, she says and does talk about assessment and trends in the field. What Adler-Kassner & Wardle do is a little different. We haven't really talked that much about their project--these threshold concepts--but it's a pretty cool idea that, if we really allow it to inform our practice, in a way that syncs with Inoue, we really have to start to think about what we are really asking our students--or any writer at any stage of proficiency--to learn when we are helping them to become better writers.

DETAILS: I'm asking something a little different this week. I would like for you to take an experience--either as a writer, a student, or a teacher--and deconstruct it in light of what you are reading. I've talked extensively about how Inoue changed how I was teaching. It's not that I wasn't doing a lot of the same things that I do now, but I was not telling students how I was doing it and that led to mystery and confusion. I was not being explicit about how I was valuing their labor so they didn't know that this is what I most wanted them to commit to any project. It's not that this is foolproof, but it's made a difference in student commitment to the work and engagement in the class.

As you write, of course, speak directly to what the reading this week helps you to understand about your practice of assessment that you are talking about here--either as someone doing the assessing or someone being assessed.

RESPOND TO A CLASSMATE: Select one (or more if so moved) of your classmates to respond to. What is your take on their assessment story? Would you suggest a different way of looking at it from how they are looking at it? I know you all well enough to know that I don't need to say the "oh, yeah, I totally agree," sentence is not as useful as it might seem. But, see what I did there? I said it anyway.

20 Comments

Katelyn Fitzsimmons

9/28/2020 08:19:24 am

Looking at the reading due for this week, I see an emphasis on the obvious: the importance of assessment in a writing classroom, but also an emphasis on types of assessment and how certain modes of assessment create space for students to engage with the writing process. Clark highlights a variety of assessment tactics including but not limited to: portfolios, communicating clear, concise expectations, and inviting students to submit a note to the teacher describing what specifically the writer would like the teacher to give special attention to. Personally, I have never thought about doing this in my teaching process, but I absolutely love it -- I think it gives ownership to the writer and an opportunity for me as the teacher to see what the writer is focused on in a unique way. Similarly, Adler-Kassner and Wardle discuss in the section, “All Writers Have More to Learn,” the importance of the fact that writing can always be improved -- writing is not an innate ability that humans are born with and text is an ongoing, developing entity on its own.

In thinking about all of this, I go back to my time during my undergraduate career as an English major. I had a lot of amazing professors at Bridgewater. The most successful classes I was in that I felt I was actively engaged and learning was when I was in a class with a portfolio based final assessment or workshopping multiple drafts. I crave new ways that I am able to incorporate similar assessment tactics in my classroom now as a writing teacher because I know through experience and research alike that it is effective. Shockingly, I don’t know if anyone else has had this experience, but during remote learning, I am finding a lot more opportunities to really provide solid feedback, especially with writing. Students according to our school’s make up policy are able to re-submit all work and I am seeing students take advantage of this. Because I am giving thorough feedback, students are able to apply that feedback to their assignments and are resubmitting quality work.

Nicole Moscone

9/28/2020 05:50:05 pm

Katelyn, That quotation from Adler- Kassner and Wardle also stood out to me. I think students often think that writing is an innate skill where some students are naturally "good" writers and some are not. I always try to explain to students that they aren't born knowing how to play their favorite sport. I stress how many hours of practice and games are played for them to get better. Students then begin to see that writing, like anything else, gets better when we practice. I also love giving students the ability to revise and resubmit. That is so great that students have used this time to take advantage of that and grow as writers. The only thing problematic with revisions is how time consuming it is to grade. I don't want to just have kids revise or resubmit if they do poorly, but having all students revise multiple times does take a long time and then I risk late feedback.

9/28/2020 05:42:08 pm

Assessing writing has proved to be the hardest aspect of my job. This is my third year teaching, and I have often questioned if assessing writing is simply challenging since I am not an experienced teacher who has seen years of writing samples. After reading this week's reading I feel as though writing assessment is a larger issue and not only for rookie teachers. Adler- Kassner & Wardle’s argument that each new context requires a different kind of writing and that writers cannot just repeat prior knowledge gained from writing to every prompt or class really struck me. I see this is in my classes often. Students think that they can just repeat what they did in their last essay and reproduce the same grade. I think my high achieving students do this the most. They find patterns and try to score a high grade. Each term, my students write a summary. My students struggle to understand the differences between the summaries. For example, after a compare and contrast summary students will now write their next summary which is a cause and effect summary using the same transition words: similarly, on the other hand, etc. Rather than understanding that they should still use transition words, but that those transitions depend on the context of their summary they fall back on what they did in their last summary. After reading this chapter, I started to think about ways to help students transfer knowledge learned in previous essays and how to apply them to a different context.

I think one way to attempt this can be done through portfolios. I could have students write a reflection piece after their summary/essay and ask them to discuss the skills they used in the essay and what they could use to help them next time. This also gives them power which Inoue argues is crucial in an antiracist class. This reflection and critical thinking about their writing could help them understand what skills and habits are transferable and which are dependent on the context of the essay. It would also show that I value the process of writing and their labor rather than the finished product. I agree with Clark that portfolios are a more authentic way to assess writing. Portfolios also reinforce Adler- Kassner & Wardle’s ideas that there is always something to learn when it comes to writing. I agree with this week’s works that writing cannot and should not be assessed by one writing sample. We must show our students that we value the process, the labor, and help them see their own growth.

9/29/2020 07:19:36 am

Hi Nicole,

As I said in my response, the most valuable writing experiences I have ever had were portfolio based. I too would love to incorporate this into my teaching practices. I also thought that incorporating reflection practices into the writing process is integral to student success. I read that and it seemed so simple, I had to ask myself, why I don't do it. I really respect what you said about showing students that we value the process, and labor. I think the best way to do this is through a portfolio and reflection system. Teaching process won't be effective if there is not value placed upon it. Another way to place value on the process is to model it ourselves. This section also made me feel the need to spend more time writing with my students while they write rather than just assessing them.

Andrea Hicks

9/29/2020 08:54:02 am

As I read through this week’s reading, the idea of labor based grading from Chapter Two of Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies kept coming back to me. While much of Clark’s chapter referred to different assessments, I noticed a few similarities between the two readings. Clark’s insistence that writing assessment focus on “global issues” in order to “help ensure that students’ ideas are being taken seriously” (155) reminded me of Inoue’s attempt to focus on labor based grading, and to ignore the dominant racial discourse in any given classroom. I found myself connecting a lot of this week’s reading to the ideas of labor based grading. Adler-Kessler and Wardle argue that with each assignment, with each context, writing changes, and I think that this ties directly to Inoue’s point and goal of labor based grading. If we were to only grade students based on the knowledge that they bring into the classroom, our assessments and results would be drastically different than they are today. While I was reading, I thought of the most direct assessment that we currently use, as mentioned by Clark, which is to assess grammar skills and knowledge. This is written off as reductive, and though I directly teach grammar in my classroom, I try to relate grammar to communication skills. That said, I couldn’t help but wonder where that line is drawn. As of right now, students struggle with grammar skills and knowledge, and I understand that directly teaching these skills is not effective, but I am wondering what our next steps are. I do not think that letting grammar slip out of the curriculum is the answer, but I do not think that we should use it as a weapon to destroy students’ confidence. I think that every teacher has encountered numerous students with amazing ideas that get lost in the shuffle of sentence structure, but I am wondering where that line can be drawn to maintain communication without getting bogged down in grammar and syntax.

Maeve McDonagh

9/29/2020 11:14:54 am

Andrea, I typically have a similar thought when doing these readings. I agree with what the theorists and researchers are saying, yet I wonder how applicable their concepts are to an actual classroom. While it is fair to put student’s ideas ahead of their grammar mechanics, that does not mean that students can ignore grammar rules and still effectively communicate their ideas. The question then follows: what is the ratio of idea development to grammar rules that teachers should aim for? Clark would seem to think that ideas make up a decent percentage of the idea ratio; however, how does that translate to a classroom like yours where students may need more help with grammar? I also wonder about the difference in labor which goes into a direct versus indirect assessment. For the students and the assessor, a short indirect assessment is less labor while, on the other hand, creating, completing, and evaluating an effective direct assessment takes significantly more time and effort. Is there something to be said for indirect assessment in the fact that it can help us assess what we consider lower-level concerns at a quicker pace than other more direct assessments?

9/29/2020 10:57:10 am

This week’s readings reminded me a lot of my time working as a writing consultant in the writing center at my undergraduate university. Because of the nature of my job, I was always providing formative assessments for students as I was tasked with helping them improve their writing rather than evaluating it. One concept from Naming What We Know which I found to be very relevant to this type of assessment was concept 4.0 “All Writers Have More to Learn.” This concept may have not affected my practice so much as my practice has helped me understand this concept. While working at the writing center I saw people at many different levels of confidence with their writing, but as a consultant, the more I worked, the more I realized that it was possible to have a conversation about writing with any writer. Their paper could be better than anything I had ever produced on my own, but having a new perspective on their writing was always valuable to the clients in my experience. Clark’s idea that global concerns should be more important than smaller, surface-level errors was another concept that stood out to me in this week’s readings. This idea helped shape how I worked because I would start a session by addressing global concerns of the papers I worked with such as how effectively they address their prompt and how clearly their ideas are developed with the client. Once we revised or made a revision plan based on the global issues depending on the length of the paper, I would utilize another skill Clark mentions and comment on a few patterns of surface-level errors I noticed which would affect the clarity of the writer’s message. By not overwhelming the client with a multitude of tiny errors, I was able to make more meaningful and well-received comments by pointing out a few patterns.

Diana Cross

9/29/2020 06:05:19 pm

Hi Maeve,

Although I have never worked as a writing consultant at a university before, your internalization of addressing global concerns rather than surface errors strongly resonates with my own thoughts and reflection this week. I say it often, but, as an ESL teacher it's nearly imperative that I focus on the global concern and overall focus on the paper. There is quite a lot of pressure from regular ed teachers, parents, and society to improve the mechanics of a students' work, but as you said, to nit pick these details, AND address the development of their ideas is overwhelming.
I also think too, that if we employ a Translingual approach to writing, which was alluded to in Kassner + Wardle but developed in one of the article's Inoue used in his "Ecologies" that I read, we should move away from "fixing" writing and focus on negotiate language differences. I wonder if you felt pressure, as I often do in my job, to coach students in the classic Standard English writing structure.

9/29/2020 04:49:58 pm

As I read the subsection titled Providing a Note to the Instructor, in Clark’s chapter “Assessing Writing”, I initially thought about the effectiveness of this task for my students, but then, more thoughtfully, I considered how it might have shaped my writing and my relationships with my teachers throughout grade school. As an ELL teacher, the way that I assess student writing has to be unique. I like to think that I look at the heart or “meat” of what my students’ are writing, trying to focus on the overall structure and development of an argument or extension of ideas in their writing rather than critiquing word choice or grammar. After reading Clark’s chapter, I felt excited by the idea of asking my students to write a note explaining what I should pay special attention to while reading their work, but I also paused to consider the challenges this presents with students developing their language acquisition. I then thought about how this small, but significant form of empowerment would have shaped my work in school and created a more meaningful space to write. In school, I often felt that what I wrote for teachers held little significance beyond the grade my teacher assigned to the work. One English teacher that I had, would only give A grades on revision essays if students used the sentences she had rewritten for them in the margins. What purpose does this serve? As Clark suggests in providing formative assessment, “...the comments often put too much attention on surface errors and stress fixing the paper to satisfy the teacher, seldom giving the student a reason to engage in deep revision” (155). Assessing writing is incredibly subjective and without being addressed, creates a real power gap between teacher and student, leaving students (including myself) little desire to write introspectively. I think the “note for the instructor” is a first step in addressing this. There were many times, when I was first practicing and learning how to write, where writing a note to my teacher explaining areas I was proud of, struggles, changes I would make with more time, etc. would have fostered a trusting relationship with them. Involving the writer in metacognitive reflection of their work with a trusted advisor/ teacher would’ve empowered me to invest in my writing at an early age.

Clare Nee

9/29/2020 07:38:03 pm

Diana, I also found Clark's idea of a note to a professor or teacher to be very helpful. I feel like the sentiments that Clark was valuing in this note mirror some of the questions that I would start my sessions off with students in the Writing Center. I think that it is a great way to set goals and to assist in the process of writing. I think that your point on revision essays is particularly insightful in this conversation. If a teacher telling a student exactly what to say, it defeats the revision purpose and the process of writing in and of itself. When I worked in the Writing Center I used to refer to spelling, grammar, and punctuation as "lower order concerns" to the students that I'd work with, whereas higher order concerns are more so about the big picture (thesis, organization, evidence, etc.) I see where it gets a bit tricky when working with ESL students, as the value of these concerns varies by writer. One An interesting idea regarding grammar, spelling, punctuation would be to come up with a symbol chart or numerical system that you can mark for a frequently made error to show these students the proper function of each mistake. That way the student can still engage in the critical thinking process and learn something by correcting it themselves rather than re-writing sentences in the margins. I totally agree with you on that one.

9/29/2020 07:05:13 pm

I’m writing this post after receiving not one, but two rejections in the span of a couple of hours for the creative work that I submitted for publication. I’ve had a few successful publications of research, but as Adler-Kassner so aptly puts it, “Writers never cease learning to write, never completely perfect their writing ability, as long as they encounter new or unfamiliar life experiences that require or inspire writing” (61). Reading Chapter 4 really reinforced the idea that you can either take feedback or the outcome of an “assessment”, which in this case is rejection, at face value and allow it to stifle your growth, or you can take it as a learning opportunity. This is easier said than done, but I think that the reason this is is because writing is so personal, because it’s our voice. Thus, we take a negative assessment as a personal rejection of worth, but the truth is that revision is a key part of the process for all writers and that is something that this chapter also illuminates very well.

Clark’s “Assessing Writing” chapter helped me, a non-teacher, really break down the terminology and the nitty-gritty details as to how teachers go about selecting a form of assessment and scoring the writing itself. Obviously as a student I’ve encountered all different types of assessment, but for me, this chapter really brought up some of my feelings as a peer tutor and volunteer within the Albany school district. I went to school in central New York and I was a volunteer in ninth grade English classes at an inner city charter school. All I can say is that if you think that the standardized testing for MA is hard, look up the New York REGENTS exams. They are brutal exams that high school students are forced to take and are counted towards their final averages in the class. In my opinion, they are the reason that so many students fail or lower the district’s test scores, which lowers funding, which negatively impacts the education that is offered, leading to a high percentage of dropout rates, and so forth. These tests combine a few different types of assessments. They are partially objective and indirect assessments with questions about grammar, vocabulary, etc. But they are mostly direct essay assessments that require the students to sit for hours in a gymnasium and produce essays on the spot. Being someone who competed high school with a decent G.P.A, I thought, they can’t be that hard. These prompts were challenging. Absolutely vague and the opposite of what Clark highlights that these assessments should be. It was a challenging experience that I often felt inadequate to help these students, because it felt like no matter how much preparation we put in, there was no telling how the exams would go in the Spring. These students were tested this rigorously in every subject. Even a standardized exam for Spanish class. Clark really puts up a good argument for portfolios and student reflection, because it permits the students to engage in writing as a process, not a one-size fits all product.

Carl Olson

9/30/2020 02:14:08 pm

I have never personally been able to see the effectiveness in those big standardized essay tests. They put too much emphasis on the product and not the process, as you mention. Revision is an important part of that process, and these tests do not allow for that. Sure, you can do a quick proofread and edit, but that is completely different to how the process of revision should work. Students have to become trained how to produce effective essays specifically for these tests, which are, frankly, not indicative of the sort of writing they will ever have to do in the real world or even in most classrooms. The assessment of these tests is supposed to be on writing ability, but it often really boils down to assessing students’ ability to quickly mimic what an effective essay is supposed to look like. I agree with you, that they do not allow for the important work that revision can do in the writing process.

9/30/2020 04:03:33 pm

Clare- first of all, I am so sorry to hear about your rejection. It seems, though, like you are learning so much about how to use that rejection as fuel, and I am excited to see what you do moving forward!

I am speaking as a teacher here, and, I think even more significant than the fact that I teach writing is the fact that I teach 7th grade. My students are SO fragile, yet SO over confident in their abilities. I really enjoyed reading your post because you wrote about getting a glimpse into the writing teacher's job and goals when assessing writing. You are a very accomplished graduate student. To know that you aren't always sure of a writing teacher's goals in assessment really highlighted, to me, the fact that my students often don't understand why they receive the grades that they do. I tend to be comment heavy and grade easy, like Professor Torda, but even then, my students won't know what they did wrong--and that is alarming to me. I find myself wondering what I can do to actually help with my feedback, rather than just making my students feel inadequate.

Thank you for your insightful post. Honestly, it got me thinking for quite some time about how I assess my students' writing.

9/30/2020 01:58:41 pm

One of the key themes in this week’s reading and in connection to Inoue’s work is that open communication with students is incredibly important to their continued success. Clark discusses the various types of assessment of student writing and how it can impact their performance, such as using portfolios or rubrics. Communicating with students on how their work is being assessed is essential because of the subjective nature of writing. With little understanding on why they receive the grades or feedback that they do, students will not be able to grow their writing skills and continue to struggle in the same areas. Rubrics are great tools because they “make the teacher’s expectations for the paper explicit” (Neff-Lippman 161). Inoue takes this further by actually involving students in the process of creating rubrics, which helps students feel more invested in the work they are doing. When creating these assessment tools for one’s class, though, it is important to keep in mind the concepts laid out in Wardle and Adler-Kassner’s book. They note that there is always more to learn, failure is important to that learning process, and that revision is key to continued development of writing skills. Building in that revision is another form of open communication with students, because it allows for the student to get feedback and put that into practice.
One of the least successful assessment experiences I’ve had was not actually when I did poorly in a class, but when I was doing well. I was taking an American literature class online while working on my associate degree, and my first paper that I turned in was a 100. There was no rubric or any feedback, but in the moment, I didn’t really care why I got an A. The next essay was the same story. And the next. I did not feel like I was growing as a writer in that class. I knew I must be doing something right, but because I worked in a writing center, I knew that there is almost always room for some sort of improvement or growth when it came to writing. I felt frustrated because I did not know where I could improve. Taking an honors level course after this one left me feeling like I was on uneasy footing, because I did not know at first what I should be doing to produce better writing. This is where I think clear communication is important in writing assessment; it allows students to feel more invested in their writing development, which in turn allows for growth.

Erin Slayton

9/30/2020 08:32:28 pm

Carl,
I’m really resonating with what you mention in your post. As it were, I was a strong writer in high school and whenever I would be paired up to give partner feedback, it was all too common that my fellow reviewer would have nothing constructive to say about my papers. Like you mentioned, “I did not feel like I was growing as a writer… I knew I must be doing something right, but… [also] knew that there is almost always room for some sort of improvement or growth when it came to writing.” I remember these same thoughts running through my mind about my own writing, which I would typically then give to my mom to proofread, in hopes she would catch something my peers had missed.

I loved the ideas Adler-Kassner mentions about externalization in Concept 4.1 “Text is an Object Outside of Oneself” which focuses more on the kind of feedback we give and what we focus on in those comments. Framing it as the idea of allowing writers to “look at the text produced so far and see how clearly it reads, what it conveys, whether it can be improved in any way” helps shape what kind of notes we leave when we make observations about what you can see being communicated or what we, as readers, understand the message to be. Even these kind of comments I would have found helpful, as it would make clear any discrepancies between what I intended to convey and what was ultimately understood. In addition to the rubric you mention would have helped, I feel like feedback on what was working well so far could also give clear indication of strengths and areas for improvement.

9/30/2020 08:16:04 pm

The particular writing experience I’m reflecting on occurred in my third year of college, when I took a poetry workshop writing course. Having never taken a workshop course before, I was pleased to find that the nature of the class would be to have rich and lovely discussions about peer work in person, offer meaningful feedback and suggestions for revision, with a final expectation that you would later revisit and revise your own poems, that have accrued feedback of their own.
Considering what is mentioned in Clark’s chapter on Assessing Writing about portfolios, I can speak to the power and value of reflection that this final assessment offered to me, being able to critically think about how my writing had changed over the course of workshop and revision in that semester. I found this to be an authentic way of assessing the progress we had made throughout the course, and the reflective artist statement offered space to keenly articulate the changes I made and why they made sense for each piece.
This also echoes sentiments of later in Clark’s chapter, about holistic scoring which “sees that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (148). Likewise, I thought the Adler-Kassner reading informed my experience, as it made me realize what my professor was aware of and valued about writing and its processes – “that it is impossible to make a valid judgement of a student writer’s ability by examining a single sample of… writing” (61). I really appreciated seeing this sentiment reified, as it made plain and simple something I have always disdained about other writing assessments, usually the standardized kind, which ask students to perform once, under inauthentic conditions, typically in a timed setting, and then place all value on that one sample of produced text. Clearly, my professor knew that that approach was outdated, and so to require a portfolio and review made clear how aligned our philosophies around teaching and writing really are.

Kyle

9/30/2020 08:58:30 pm

Hey Erin,
It's funny. I was reading your post and it made me think about how I used to fancy myself a bit of a poet when I was an undergraduate. I wrote a lot of lyrics for a folk project my friend and I were working on at the time and I carried a fake leather notebook around and wrote in public. Again...I "fancied" myself a poet. Either way--I wanted to mention that I registered for two different workshops and withdrew from them both before the deadline came about. The thought of sharing my creative work was terrifying. Writing has always been a very personal activity for me. I still keep a few notebooks and I write in them here and there, pretending I'm still 22 and pretending like I still feel like I have something to say (elusively of course--poems aren't cool unless the language is elusive right? My pieced from back then tell me that's true). So what am I talking about? What's the point?
I'm trying to improve what I do at school as a teacher. I'm trying to come up with ways to run my classes in a managable workshop model that works for high school students who profess to writers without confidence. They write that way often too. It just makes me think--will all these writers who lack confidence benefit from sharing their work with students all the time? I like to think that it will. I like to think that they will have your experience. I like to think that the students will just suddenly pop open and exercize their freedom and empowerment through the written word. And yet, I've never felt that I've run one single successful workshop activity in over 9 years of teaching. I find that the lesson falls flat. The students are excessively nice to one another about their writing. I am unable to model what a good workshop experience looks like so the students just do what they can--act cordially because they know what it means to share something they're not confident in. THis is all capped off with the fact that...I still need to read all these pieces and give feedback right? The kids think that because I'm a teacher my feedback is WICKED valuable...but often the volume of reading I need to do and feedback I need to give causes that reading and feedback to be brief and often unhelpful. Yet I still belive that all that practice was valuable. I believe they learned. It's just so hard to translate that into a number that a report card can indicate a level of attainment to familites.
Oh well. I guess I have something like 25 more years to figure that out. I'm excited to try.

Eternal Late-night DB Poster, Kyle Rego!

9/30/2020 08:43:03 pm

Clark’s fifth chapter, “Assessing Writing” was informative in that it outlined many different modes of assessment that have, and do represent the inner-workings of classes concerned with the direct instruction of writing. As Dr. Torda points out in the directions for this post, the content of her chapter is clear cut, but certainly informatively so. I found, however, Adler-Kassner’s & Wardle’s chapter to be thoughtful, engaging, and...inspiring? I hate to use that word--it definitely gets tossed around haphazardly. It’s like the word “love” in a middle school. BUT I often felt encouraged in an inspiring way as I read. The nine years I’ve spent teaching, as I recall it, is marked by a deep mistrust of assessment. My love for the profession lies in the opportunity to plan lessons and work with students. I have worked to generate a classroom space that is very different from the ones I inhabited when I was in high school. I hope my approach to teaching “ELA” (and I truly believe that the last...three or so years of my career can be characterized by the fact that it) generates a “practice space.” I have been able to decentralize my role in the classroom, and in doing so I’ve come to mistrust my ability to create authentic opportunity for valuable assessment and feedback. Yet in reading the fourth chapter of Adler-Kassner’s & Wardle’s book I found myself more encouraged. For example, Peggy O’Neill offers a section entitled “Assessment Is an Essential Component of Learning to Write” wherein she posits that “...studentes benefit when teachers integrate assessment throughout the learning process through a variety of activities.” Here, O’Neill helped me realize that my most successful academic years of teaching take their truest form as an amalgamation of consistent mini-assessments. Her section “inspired” (see! There it is again--the word love written at the bottom of a note folded into a triangle) me to realize that I MUST find a way to decentralize my view of the most important assessment in a writing class as THE ESSAY (in all caps with a “dun dun dun” a la 1940s radio drama). I find that I place an incredible amount of importance on these “final” essays that cap off the units that divi up my years. Yet, I believe, the purest and most helpful forms of assessment in my classroom are the much smaller, instruction-based, real-time, conversational feedback that takes place while I allow my students to work and grapple with their learning among the comfort and assistance of their classmates.

Liz Brady

10/1/2020 11:52:53 am

I loved reading your love-fest for Adler-Kassner and Wardle's chapter because I, too, found myself inspired. I like that you treat your classroom as a practice space because, like Collin Brooke and Allison Carr write, writing classrooms should be "treating failure as something all writers work through, rather than as a symptom of inadequacy or stupidity" (63). If students never get the space to try and fail, then they will not progress as writers. I spent most of middle and high school regurgitating the same essay with different words and my growth as a writer fell stagnant. Allowing for experimentation is awesome and I totally cosign that.

10/1/2020 11:46:47 am

Adler-Kassner and Wardle’s chapter regarding writing being a constant learning process was really impactful to me. Shirley Rose highlights the idea that “encountering difficulty in a writing situation is an indication that they are ready to learn something new about writing” (61). Struggling with writing isn’t indicative of a lack of intelligence or capability. It’s an opportunity to grow. Considering I turned in the worst paper I’ve written since starting graduate school in August and promptly cut bangs into my hair, I think I need to internalize that message.
I didn’t read the chapters of Inoue’s work that focus on concrete assessment strategies, but he certainly highlights the personal nature of writing throughout the book. He claims that writing is inherently tied to the person who produced it (Roland Barthes would love that). I think that unlike, say, math, assessing something as fluid, subjective, and personal as writing is extraordinarily difficult. Portfolio-based assessment seems to be the way to go according to Clark, considering it allows students the grace to work in drafts and improve upon their work. It allows educators to be there for students during every step of their writing process. That being said, students can’t get too used to being treated like human beings when they’re still taking bunches of standardized tests.
I just had a conversation with a friend that I went to public elementary and middle school with before she transferred to a private Catholic high school. She said that in her first day of 9th grade English class, her teacher asked them to write a timed essay about the last book they read. Her friend who attended private schools for his whole life literally had no idea how to do that. “At least MCAS did one good thing for me,” she said.
Is it useful to be able to write a decent essay in 20 minutes? As a chronic procrastinator, I would say definitely. But should it take precedence over the reality of the writing process? No. Because once standardized testing ends, people aren’t asked to write that way anymore. Why are we testing for it?

Assessment, again? Assessment! Again!

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