Informal writing can be a means of formative assessment, just
like a pop quiz.
Each is a quick way for teachers to find out how much students
have learned (or misunderstood) and how much they still have
to teach before the final exam.
Informal writing is ideal for writing courses because it gives
students writing practice in addition to any other benefit it
confers.
Use informal writing for quick check
The same informal prompts you use as write-to-learn activities
do double duty as assessment vehicles. You still have students
write briefly in response to their class reading and discussion,
but you look at the results from a slightly different perspective.
Authentic learning and authentic assessment in one package. What
could be simpler?
Test informal prompts yourself
Just because a writing prompt is informal doesnt mean you
can just whack out any old thing. You can't have a good formative assessment with a crummy writing prompt.
Test
your informal prompts to make sure they produce the sorts
of responses you want to generate.
How do you test a prompt? answer it yourself. Thats
right. Get out your pen and write a response.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the first time you skip the
testing process, your prompt won't produce the kind of responses
you wanted. It happens to me every time I slack off.
Give feedback
Since you required students to write, you are required to read
their writing and respond. (Formative assessment is
half instruction and half assessment; responding is part of the
instruction half.)
Im not saying you have to correct papers, or grade papers,
or any of that standard Miss Inky Fingers stuff. You can respond
to informal writing activities in many faster, easier ways.
-
Putting one typical anonymous response
to a question on an overhead or white board and discussing
it briefly.
-
Making a whole-class comment, like the class
is doing well at learning flabits or I must not
have explained flabits well. Let me try a different angle.
-
Written responses on individual students papers.
Give each student some kind of personal written feedback each
week, if possible. If you cant manage that, do one comment
every other week.
Focus on the ideas in the responses. You may mention a
writing mechanics error only if you can say it makes the writing
hard to understand. Don't make mechanics your main concern.
Encouraging comments are better at motivating to learn
learners than critical ones. A phrase or sentence about something
specific thats good about the students work is
best.
Give A's for effort
You dont grade informal writing on its quality. Students
either do the work or they dont. Its an I/O, pass
or fail, A or F situation. Dont phrase it that way to
students, however.
For students, present the write-to-learn activities you use for
formative assessment as opportunities to get an easy grade.
Josh shows up in class, turns in answers to write-to-learn questions,
he gets an A.
If you dont want to give A's to people who come to class
only once every third week, you can fiddle with the grading standards.
You might require students to complete 90% of the activities for
an A, 80% for a B, etc.
What you cannot do is give Josh an F because he thought active
voice had something to do with cheer leading. Dont fall
into the English teacher trap of thinking you are
grading students.
If you mess up, you have
to teach the whole topic over again until everybody gets it.
Next stop: sample formative
assessments.
Published 31-Mar-2008; updated:
15-Jun-2010