Assessed Samples of Student Work

For my pre-assessment tool, I decided to give my sophomore English students a timed writing sample before I instructed them on timed writing. For this sample, I asked students to answer the question “Should our high school transition to wall-to-wall career academies?”. I gave them a brief explanation of what wall-to-wall career academies were, as well as showing them a short video. Then I provided them with a rubric for their writing sample, the prompt, and 20 minutes to write an essay.

Rubric for Timed Essays

The following is a sample of one of my student’s writing for this pre-assessment. I will refer to this student as Student A from now on.

Student A Pre-Assessment Writing Sample

 When I graded these pre-assessments, I looked for the following skills:
• Ability to develop a thesis that makes a claim
 • Consistent argument throughout writing
 • Two or more reasons that student made the claim they did
• Evidence (logic and reasoning) to support their reasons
• A conclusion that wraps up the paper and restates the claim
• Logical organization and the use of paragraphs and transition sentences
• Correct grammar and sentence structure

Looking at Student A’s writing sample, I determined that they made a claim, “a wall to wall academy is not a good idea for the students.” This claim answered the question in the prompt and took a side on the argument, but it was not a developed “thesis” that gave the reader a glimpse into what the paper would be talking about. Student A had a consistent argument throughout the writing that all focused around the fact that career academies would not be good for the students. They gave three reasons why they thought that career academies should not be put into place at the school, and included logic and reasoning based on these reasons. The conclusion was not well-developed, simply stating: “these 3 reasons are why I don’t think [our school] should have wall to wall academys.” Even though this conclusion restated the claim, it was vague and did not leave a strong impression on the reader (it is possible that the student ran out of time to finish the conclusion). The organization of this paper was mostly logical, but the first reason was in the same paragraph as the introduction instead of starting a new paragraph, and transition sentences were only in some places. Student A had many grammar mistakes, including misspellings and not capitalizing the first word of each sentence, but their sentence structure was well done. This student earned a 3 out of 4 on the rubric for their timed response. I determined that Student A’s areas of need were: writing a thesis, writing a conclusion, organization and transition sentences, and grammar.

 After reviewing all of the students’ essays, I chose to teach them something called the ABCD Method of Attacking a Prompt, a strategy for timed writing. This strategy provided simple ways to decipher what a prompt was asking of you, brainstorm possible answers, make an outline for your response, and then proofread what you have written.

ABCD Timed Writing Strategies

Below are the Standards for this lesson.

College and Career Readiness Standards for Writing:

• W.9-10.1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. 
• W.9-10.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. 
• W.9-10.10: Write routinely over extended time frames or shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences. 

For the post-assessment, I slightly altered the same prompt, asking students to: Consider the advantages and disadvantages of switching to career academies, then make a claim about whether or not [our school] would benefit from having wall-to-wall academies. Support your claim with logic and reasoning.

Because students were given the same amount of time, but now had more tools to work through their pre-writing process, most students were not able to completely finish their writing in the time allotted. The following is Student A’s post-assessment writing sample.

Student A's Post-Assessment Timed Writing

Student A's Post-Assessment Brainstorming

Reflection: 
I believe that the lesson I taught between assessments was very helpful for students to organize their thinking and improve their timed writing strategies. I wish that I had given students more time to work through their post-assessment writing, and I will be going back with them to give them more time to finish their responses. I think that giving them a timed writing sample without teaching them first was a good idea, as I was able to measure what skills they came into the classroom with and determine what they needed to know. Because of this, I will be able to make small groups for working on specific goals so that not everyone has to learn all of the same things if some students have already mastered the skill. Going forward, I would like to spend more time teaching thesis strategies to my students, as well as teaching them the skills to take the strategies they have learned for writing timed essays and adapt those for essays that require outside research and revision.