Finding a Place to Start

Last month I met with my schools literacy specialist.  I told her about my action research and how I wanted to create rubrics with my students so they could learn more about the writing process, the traits of writing, the criteria for good writing, how to determine good writing and poor writing, how to determine the quality of their own writing, and how they can use the rubric to help them become better writers.  We discussed typical early second grade writing and my group of writers to determine if my group was typical of early second grade writers.  They are.  Then, we looked at the districts writing rubric.  The writing rubric is a K-8 continuum for assessing narrative writing with 10 levels of criteria; one being low and ten the highest, the traits being evaluated are structure, elaboration, concept of writing/craft and meaning/significance. After looking at the rubric we discussed where second grade writing typically lies on the continuum for assessing WOD scores and how those levels equate to a writing score for report card grading.  For second grade a level 2 on the continuum is a 1 on the report card which means below standard, a level 3 is a 2 on the report card which means approaching the standard, a level 4 is a 3 which means they are meeting the standard and any level above a 4 means they are exceeding the standard in second grade.  We then looked at the criteria for each trait at each level to see what that writing could look like.  From there, we discussed my students writing and where we thought a good starting point would be for them to learn more about the writing process, the traits of writing, the criteria for good writing, how to determine good writing and poor writing, how to determine the quality of their own writing, and how they can use a rubric to help them become better writers.  We thought it would be best to start at the beginning with having them investigate the trait of Concept of Writing/Craft and have them think of the criteria.  I will start the process by putting up writing examples that show work that is below, approaching, meeting, and exceeding the standard. I will follow step one and two.

1.    Look at Models--review examples of good and poor work and have a class discussion of what makes the one piece of work good and the other work poor.  Record the students responses during the discussion.

2.   List Criteria—Ask the students how you should assess the work.  Lead the students to recall the list generated during the discussion of the good and the poor work examples.  List the students’ ideas under the heading “Criteria” or “What Counts”.  Guide students to think of less obvious ideas or criteria as well.  Once students have given their ideas of criteria you may add what you want and explain why that criteria is important to the quality of work