Narrative Assessment

There are many lenses to look through when assessing student writers.  Here are some of the things I consider:

1. How well students write when given time, choice, support, and unlimited resources, as well as how well they write on-demand.
2. The effectiveness of their personal writing processes.
3. Attempts at sophisticated craft moves, even if they fail.

I also believe writers are in more need of feedback and less need of evaluation.  As I’ve grown as a writer, I realize an important factor in my growth is my willingness to reflect on my writing life.  Therefore, I try to provide these opportunities for my students also.

Here are the ways I collect grades for my ninth grade students.  (Please note formative assessment plays a large role in my day-to-day life in the classroom.  The following is summative assessment, and specifically how I boil it down into a grade.)

I use a rubric which was developed by the ninth grade English teachers at my school, Wawasee High School.  We used Penny Kittle’s narrative rubric in her book Write Beside Them (Heinemann, 2008) and Kelly Gallagher’s rubric in his book Teaching Adolescent Writers (Stenhouse, 2006) as a jumping-off point.  We then molded it into the following rubric to meet our needs.  You can see the specific lenses we look through to determine if students are writing well (which are influenced by Carl Anderson’s work in Assessing Writers (Heinemann, 2005).

You’ll notice there are no point values.  We give feedback in each of the areas and then assign a score according to the whole performance.  (Really, how can we put a point value on meaning?  It is a much more significant than a 4-point deficit if the meaning is lacking, but everything else is executed in superbly.) 

Students may rewrite as many times as they wish and resubmit their work.  The new (and improved) score completely replaces their previous score.  In this way, students are encouraged to revise and work toward becoming stronger writers, as opposed to simply getting the assignment done.  (Again, there are strong traces of Kittle and Gallagher’s work in this thinking.)

This rubric is also used to score their On-Demand Writing Experience (aka:  A Writing Prompt).   Stacey coined the term on-demand way back when we were blogging in our own little corners of the world.  I’ve noticed students prefer it to writing prompt.

Let me just say, I was way-impressed with my students’ work on this assessment.  Several commented how well they wrote and wanted clean copies of their writing for themselves.  As I read their writing I noticed, first-hand, their growth as writers.  What a very good feeling.

Finally, I must have insight into their writing process.  This is necessary as I encourage them to become more efficient writers, and because Indiana’s LA Standard 4 is all about process.  If I’m going to determine if my students are meeting this standard, I must know more about their individual processes.

Through experience, I realize students often attempt craft strategies, but fall short in the execution.  As I assess what they know about writing well, it is helpful when they identify specific craft and process strategies on the manuscript they turn-in. 

This narrative reflection addresses all of these needs.

Let me close with this disclaimer:  My assessment is continually evolving.  The more I read about assessing student writers, the more I examine my practices and change them to become more efficient.  It is my goal to discern an accurate portrait of each writer in my classroom, while at the same time determining whether they are able to meet the standards on a consistent and proficient basis.