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Crafting Writers with Formative Assessment Practices

Posted on February 9th, 2008 by Samantha Lundin Thom.
Categories: Uncategorized.

“I can really picture your poem because of the descriptive words you’re using” one gr. 4 student said to her partner as I sat down to join them. “Thanks, but I need to focus on adding emotion to my writing. Do you have any suggestions for me?” the boy replied.

This was typical of the student conferences and writers’ workshop I witnessed in Nancy Reid’s gr. 4/5 class at Southridge Elementary School in Prince George on a blustery Friday afternoon. Although it was clear that Ms. Reid and her students were feeling the effects of a long week, all thoughts of the weekend disappeared as the class got down to work on their writing.

After reviewing the criteria they generated for quality free-verse in a previous class, students paired up and read their writing to each other. Focusing on making specific observations to help each other develop writing goals, the students asked pointed questions of each other to get the advice they needed. All around the room, boys and girls were reading their poetry proudly as they reviewed their work, referencing their criteria and the feedback they’d each received in private conference with Ms. Reid. They excitedly sought an audience from anyone in the room.

Probing them for more information about what it took to get their poems to near-completeness, students referred me to the published examples of prose they’d been reading aloud for weeks, explaining that with each new book, they’d experimented with the author’s style and vocabulary as a follow-up exercise. With a number of initial pieces to choose from, the students then selected a piece to refine. After completing their finished pieces, the class consolidated what they learned from published works, and from the Writing Performance Standards into a checklist of criteria. They then had the courage and positive attitude to re-write the piece from scratch - always striving to produce something better than the last.

These students understand and discuss concepts of criteria, performance standards, revision, accuracy, and constructive feedback as a regular writing practice, whatever the genre. What really gets me shaking in my boots about Nancy Reid’s teaching is the quality of the pieces that the students produce through this process. With my jaw hanging open from the expressiveness of the work from the boy quoted above, I was blown away to discover that he “hated” the writing process, and had been staring at a blank page until only a few days ago. A statement that completely belied the engagement I witnessed earlier, and the quality of his finished piece.

As I left the school, I smiled as I remembered another student confidently explain to me how the performance standards clearly explain the characteristics of a strong writing sample. She snickered, her eye twinkling as she admitted the performance standards are a cheat sheet for moving her writing from Minimally Meeting Expectations to Fully Meeting Expectations. She knows she and her peers have an edge over other classrooms.

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