Writing-on-Demand District Writing Assessment
Guidelines
Background
Previously, the Secondary English Department annually administered an end-or-the-year
district writing assessment (DWA) in Grades 7 through 10. Those assessments were scored
during the summer by a group of English teachers. Typically we stored the writing samples in
crates and sent them onto the next year’s teacher. We also provided teachers with a printout of
the data showing their students’ scores on the DWA over time.
During the 2004-2005 school year, we proposed a change in the way we were delivering
the writing assessment for the following reasons:
1. We were no longer using crates and portfolios, opting instead to contribute one piece
of writing per student at the end of the year to the Cumulative Career Portfolio
maintained by guidance offices.
2. While the DWA provided summative information about students’ writing skills,
many teachers ignored those scores in favor of formative writing assessments that
they themselves administered, especially at the beginning of the school year.
3. The PSSA writing assessment emphasized writing in a variety of modes. While we
employed multiple prompts in response to the three modes of discourse (narrative,
informational, and persuasive), students were responding only to one prompt. As a
result, our students were not getting adequate practice in on-demand writing in all of
the modes, especially in the informational and persuasive modes currently being
assessed by the state.
4. The new SAT emphasized writing-on-demand, and the high-stakes quality of this
assessment was pushing us to provide practice in this kind of assessment as well.
In our efforts to revise our approach to this assessment, two teachers at each grade level
piloted writing-on-demand assessments during the 2005-2006 school year. All teachers met at
the end of that school year to plan the implementation of the new assessment across grades 7
through 11 during the 2006-2007 school year.
Purpose of Revised Writing-on-Demand District Writing Assessment
The purpose of the new district writing assessment, which we are calling the Writing-onDemand District Writing Assessment (WOD), includes the following:
This new approach will allow us to
• incorporate preparation for “writing on demand” as a more routine classroom practice
across grades 7 through 11 rather than as a last-minute preparation for the PSSA
writing assessment in 8th and 11th grades.
• use the assessments (both the formative one in the fall and the summative one in the
spring) to inform instruction.
• provide students and faculty with a common language for discussing writing that is
aligned with state standards and the new SAT writing component.
• reinforce good writing practices throughout the year through the two “on demand”
assessments and the core writing assessments that are “full process” pieces.
Procedure for Implementing the New Assessment
All English teachers in grades 7 through 11 will begin implementing the Writing-onDemand District Writing Assessment in the fall of 2006, using the following guidelines:
1. Students will write on demand two times during the year. Practice in responding to
informational and persuasive modes will predominate. The first assessment,
administered sometime during September and October, will be a formative one; the
last one, administered sometime during April and May, will be a summative
assessment.
2. Teachers teaching the same course will agree on the two common prompts that each
student will respond to. Teachers will meet sometime during the first week of school
to develop the first prompt; the second prompt will be collaboratively developed
during the early April in-service. Tenth and 11th-grade teachers will format their
prompts using the SAT format of providing a provocative quote and then asking
students to take a stand on an issue and argue their position by providing evidence.
3. Teachers will prepare students for both assessments using the suggestions included in
the text, Writing on Demand. These suggestions are “good practice’ ones that we
hope teachers will continue to utilize as they instruct writing during the year:
a) Teachers should teach students to think backwards when working with models of
writing: writing>rubric>prompt.
b) As teachers teach the writing process, especially during the implementation of the
core writing assessments, teachers should remind students that developing a
personal writing process will help them during writing-on-demand assessments.
c) Students should learn the “good writing” habit of rhetorically analyzing promptsidentifying the claim or topic, the audience, the purpose or mode, some strategies
for support, and the role or persona to be assumed by the writer.
d) Teachers should make assessment “more visible” by providing opportunities for
students to evaluate their peers’ writing, to self-evaluate their own writing, and to
create rubrics for writing assignments.
e) Students should learn and practice close-reading techniques to heighten their
awareness of an author’s craft; in other words, students should learn “to read like
writers.”
f) Students should understand the writing-on-demand assessment context and learn
how to maximize their performance, given the time constraints, through an
analysis of the testing format. An interesting approach here is to suggest a 10-305 approach, where students pre-write and organize their thoughts for 10 minutes,
draft for 30 minutes, and edit and proofread for 5 minutes.
4. Students will be given one class period (47 minutes) to prewrite, draft, and edit and
proofread their essays. Students should not have access to dictionaries or other
writing aids. They may, however, have a copy of the rubric that will be used to assess
the writing. In order to have reliable conventions scores, they should handwrite their
essays rather than use computers.
5. Teachers will score their own assessments using a common rubric (aligned with the
PSSA writing rubric) on a 4, 3, 2, 1 scale. Teachers will have the option of scoring
holistically or by domains, providing each student with a score in focus, content,
organization, and style. Whatever approach a teacher decides to take, it is important
to give a student some idea of his writing strengths and weaknesses. Consequently, a
teacher scoring a paper holistically will have to note writing strengths and weaknesses
in addition to giving an overall score. Teachers will also provide students with a
conventions core on a 4, 3, 2, 1 scale. Teachers will have the option of sharing both
of these scores with students or sharing only areas of weakness and strength.
An interesting option pursued by 9th-grade teachers this year was to have teachers
exchange papers with other teachers so that students in other classes could peerevaluate their peers’ writing (students’ ID numbers were used instead of names).
Students were asked to score papers using the domain scoring guide; then they were
asked to identify two areas of strength (“glows”) and one area of weakness (“grow”).
When teachers returned papers, they received both a teacher and a peer evaluation.
Optimally, we should provide teachers the time to assess these papers either during an
in-service or during department meeting time.
6. An important component of the first assessment, which is a formative one, is the
gathering of data to inform instruction. Optimally, teachers using a common prompt
would meet to share and analyze data, set goals for improvement, and discuss and
select strategies for achieving that goal and differentiating instruction. In addition,
resources to implement those teaching strategies would be made available. Time
should be set aside during a fall in-service or during a department meeting to do this
work.
7. As part of both the fall formative and spring summative assessment, teachers will
provide students with feedback about their current progress. Good feedback practices
•
•
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facilitate the development of self-assessment of learning.
generate teacher and peer dialogue around learning.
clearly clarify what good performance is.
provide opportunities for students to close the gap between their current level of
performance and the goal
• deliver high-quality information to students about their learning.
• encourage positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem.
• provide information to teachers that can be used to shape instructional practice.
Nicol, Dr. David J. and Debra Macfarlane-Dick. “Formative Assessment and Selfregulated Learning: A Model and Seven Principles of Good Feedback Practice.”
Studies in Higher Education 31.2 (2006): 199-218.
Teachers may decide to share either scores as well as areas of strength and weakness
in order to help students set goals for improvement throughout the year. These goals
can become personal focus correction areas for writing assignments during the year.
8. After students receive feedback on their spring writing-on-demand assessment,
teachers will ask students to select one piece of writing from their in-class scoring
portfolio and reflect on their writing progress during the year. This reflection will be
attached to the selected writing sample and filed in students’ Cumulative Career
Portfolios housed in guidance offices.
9. We will continue to administer full writing-process assessments during the year, using
the two core writing assessments that we have developed for each course. These
assessments will provide opportunities for students to practice more in-depth the
writing skills they will need to perform well on writing-on-demand assessments.
Sharing Results of the Writing-on Demand Assessments
While an analysis of scores would be helpful in judging the effectiveness of our overall
writing program, keeping a database of individual student scores over time seems unnecessary.
The “teacher of the moment” is the entity primarily interested in diagnosing the needs of his/her
students and in monitoring their progress over time. The writing-on-demand fall and spring
assessments effectively provide this information to teachers. T
We will also continue to monitor the results of the 8th and 11th-grade PSSA Writing
Assessments and shape our instruction in response to an analysis of the data from these tests.