Writing—whether a persuasive essay, lab report, constructed response or research paper—is a consistent component of performance tasks that are most used by teachers to measure their students’ knowledge, knowledge of concepts, and skills. The causes are many, but perhaps the most important is the fact that the very act of writing, which requires students to make feeling of information and ideas also to express that understanding coherently, is itself a skill that is critical.
And yet, despite its importance, there is certainly little consensus among educators at any grade level about what constitutes effective writing, how it ought to be measured, and on occasion even how it should be taught.
One step toward solving this conundrum may be the consistent usage of a general writing rubric that is analytic. An writing that is analytic, like all rubrics, contains sets of criteria aligned to progressive levels of performance. However, unlike a holistic writing rubric , which evaluates all criteria simultaneously to arrive at an individual score, an analytic writing rubric separates the criteria into discrete elements, such as controlling ideas, organization, development, diction and conventions. One of many great things about the analytic rubric is that, in its most general form, it can be utilized with a variety of writing tasks—helping students learn the qualities of effective writing, regardless of subject area.
For such a writing rubric to be most reliable, however, the teachers with the rubric must agree with the characteristics of effective writing, and align their scoring so that they are all applying the rubric’s criteria and score consistently. This outcome is best achieved by teachers calibrating their scoring . The calibration process asks teachers to score a series of normed essays which were scored ahead of time by expert educators with the rubric that is same. When teachers successfully align their scoring with these normed essays, they are also aligned with one another.
Through this calibration process, teachers arrive at clear, consistent expectations in connection with characteristics of effective writing—and, in doing so, develop a vocabulary that is common which to go over student make use of each other and their students. As Libby Baker, et al., explain when you look at the article, “ Reading, Writing and Rubrics ,” calibrating and scoring student work is a meaningful kind of professional learning: “As teachers deepen their knowledge of the characteristics of good writing … and exactly how students’ mastery evolves with time… they became more insightful as diagnosticians and instructional decision makers.”
The consistent use of a general analytic rubric across a group, department or school could be a significant component in blended and learning that is personalized.
In the classroom, teachers may use this rubric to:
- clarify expectations for students and also make the grading process transparent;
- Gather information that is diagnostic plan instruction and design interventions for individual students;
- give students personalized formative feedback on each facet of their writing;
- help students identify specific, reachable goals for the writing they truly are to perform; and,
- provide students with a framework custom-writings.net/ by which they could read, analyze and ultimately emulate the types of effective writing.
Individually, students may use the rubric to:
- practice the language of the discipline using the rubric’s terms, descriptors and criteria when discussing their particular writing;
- observe how good writing is a process, not simply a job to perform;
- think on and assess the quality of one’s own writing;
- Set goals that are personal improvement; and,
- Give feedback that is meaningful the writing of others.
There was clearly an occasion when using rubrics and calibrating teacher scoring required significant amounts of time, energy and paperwork—and the resulting data were tough to manage and analyze. Today, however, online applications streamline calibration, writing instruction, the utilization of rubrics to score student work, together with collection of data that can measure student growth in the long run.
At AcademicMerit , for example, you can expect an on-line calibration tool called FineTune by which individual teachers can calibrate their scoring using our Common Core-aligned general analytic writing rubric. Using this application, teachers score real, anonymized learning student essays that have been previously scored and normed by expert educators. When a teacher’s scoring is proven to be in line with that of the experts, s/he is considered calibrated not in just the experts, but in addition with some of the other teachers who have been through this calibration process.
When teams of calibrated teachers make use of this general rubric that is analytic their own students, they—and their students—share a typical knowledge of the sun and rain of great writing to ensure all students are held to your same expectations, as well as the resulting data retains validity from teacher to teacher and from classroom to classroom.
In a blended-learning environment, the most popular expectations communicated by a broad analytic writing rubric—used along with best practices in professional learning and instruction—can help students take control of the writing for them to clearly and consistently communicate their ideas.
About Sue Jacob
Sue Jacob may be the Academic Director for AcademicMerit. As former school that is high teacher in Minneapolis, Sue has held a number of teacher leadership roles, including mentor, teacher-leader for English curriculum and instruction, and author of accelerated curriculum for advanced learners in grades 6-12. Sue received her National Board certification in 2005. It had been throughout the National Board portfolio procedure that Sue realized the powerful role writing plays in strengthening students’ critical thinking, a belief that is in the centre of AcademicMerit’s academic and professional learning products.