The Problem With Writing Assessments

In a previous blog post I talked about the benefits of using cold writes to diagnose student needs (in the same way pre-tests are used in the maths classroom.)

In the post, I outlined the need for teachers to analyse their students’ cold writes in order to determine their students’ strengths and weaknesses. I explained that taking the time to go through this process before you start planning enables you to plan writing lessons that are tailored specifically to your students’ needs. #nomoreguesswork

If, for example, you discover that many of your students are struggling with a particular aspect of writing, you can then plan to explicitly teach that aspect during your lessons. This is known as ‘just in time’ teaching, rather than ‘just in case’ teaching.

Although I’m a huge advocate of the cold write-informed approach to assessment and planning, it does have one giant pitfall: it requires deep teacher content knowledge.

By this, I mean it requires the teacher to have a deep and broad understanding of all the elements/ ingredients that go into crafting effective writing. Because, without this knowledge you won’t:

a) know what to look for when analysing your students’ writing and/or

b) be able to differentiate your instruction to meet your students’ needs.

(Click here to another one of my blogs that explains content knowledge in more depth)

What does deep content knowledge mean in practice?

I think an analogy would be helpful to explain this…

When my husband and I were looking to buy a house, we could only assess each of the houses we inspected based on the things we knew to look for. This meant we looked at elements such as the number of rooms, the amount of light, proximity to the closest parkrun (true story) and the size of each of the rooms (where would my library fit?).

We could only look for -and therefore see- the things within our content knowledge.   

My dad, on the other hand, is a plasterer. He knows houses. When he enters a house, he can see far more than our untrained eyes. He looks at the plastering, the structural elements and the builder’s overall craftmanship. Dad knows houses so well that he can name the specific techniques the tradies have used to create the house. He knows exactly what to look for and where to find it -which means he can also tell if a particular element is missing or underdone.

Unlike my husband and I, my Dad has deep content knowledge when it comes to houses. (Although my mum would say this knowledge doesn’t extend to keeping houses clean…🤣)

How does this apply to assessing student writing?

When reading your students’ cold writes, you can only see the elements of writing that you know to look for.

If you only know to look for the elements of structure and conventions, they’ll be all you’ll be able to look for and/or see in your students’ writing. You likely won’t see the lack of topcoat on the walls or the poor sanding job on the ceiling joins. You’ll then likely fall into the trap of spending most of your instructional time teaching your students about your two comfort areas of structure and conventions.

The lesson here is that limited assessment criteria = limited teaching scope.

When teachers lack deep content knowledge around writing, it leads to a cycle of students being taught the same elements of writing year in and year out- which will ultimately lead to stagnated growth in your student writers.

Good writing involves more than structure and conventions

In order to teach to your students’ point of need, to differentiate instruction and/or to provide effective feedback, teachers need deep content knowledge around ALL of the ingredients that go into crafting effective writing.

The structure of a piece of writing is important, but it’s not sufficient by itself. Likewise, the use of appropriate conventions is critical, but will not create a great piece of writing alone. There are other ingredients required in the writing cake!

To be clear, students DO need explicit instruction in these two elements, but they also need instruction in the other ingredients that work together to create effective writing.

What are the ingredients of good writing?

This is the exact question a group of American teachers asked back in the 1980s.

It’s the question that led them to undertake a massive research project and eventually identify the 6 most common traits of good writing.

This group of teachers knew the importance of effective assessment in driving ‘just in time’ instruction for their students. The problem was though that -like so many of today’s writing assessments- the criteria they were using were too narrowly focused on the elements of structure and conventions alone.

Limited assessment criteria = limited teaching scope.

The teachers wanted an assessment tool that reflected the broad scope of elements required in effective writing. So, they set about researching, analysing, discussing, learning, creating, trialling and tweaking until they eventually developed the concept of the 6+1 traits of writing.

Their investigations identified 6 key traits present in effective writing. These traits included structure and conventions, but also -importantly- extended to include: ideas, voice, word choice and sentence fluency. (They added ‘presentation’ -for published pieces only- as an extra trait later).

The teachers then used these traits to develop a writing assessment rubric to help teachers to better identify their students’ strengths and weaknesses - with the primary aim of using the data to teach into their students’ weaknesses.

What does your current writing assessment measure?

• Have a look at your school’s current writing assessment criteria.
• Which traits does it include?
• Does it prioritise any particular trait over the others?
• Doe your current writing assessment represent a broad understanding of all the ingredients required to craft effective writing?

How can you build teacher content knowledge around writing?

I created the Writing Traits Masterclass to build teacher content knowledge around writing.

This self-paced course includes a 1-hour deep dive into each of the 6 traits where I:

• explain the trait
• show what the trait looks like in mentor texts
• highlight the presence/absence of the trait in real student writing

Click here to learn more about the Traits Masterclass course.

Related Posts:

• 5 Steps To Improving Your School’s NAPLAN Writing Data
• 3 Reasons You Should use Cold Writes In The Writing Classroom
• 3 Common Misconceptions About The 6+1 Traits of Writing