English teachers rarely do formative assessments using informal
writing prompts for things like grammar and punctuation rules. It's
time we started.
Our colleagues in the hard sciences and math have already mastered
informal writing to help them keep tabs on how well students are
learning (or not learning) material.
This page contains seven informal writing prompts you can use as
models for crafting your own formative assessments of writing
mechanics rules students must master.
Informal prompt on sentence subject
Here's a writing prompt I used with college students. It's equally
appropriate for fifth graders.
Write a sentence of 10-25 words.
Identify the simple subject of the sentence.
In 1-3 sentences, define what the term sentence means and explain
why the word you chose fits the definition. You have 2 minutes
to write.
One of my students, a career woman with a responsible position
for a major corporation and a couple of teenage kids, wrote a response
like this:
I really like that red car.
The subject is car. A subject is what the sentence is about.
This sentence is about cars.
That response told me at once that I had to reteach material she
misunderstood back about third grade. If her elementary school teacher
had used informal writing as a means of formative assessment, I
might not have had to reteach it 20+ years later.
3 prompts about collective nouns
Below are three different prompts you could use in discussing the
topic of collective nouns. You would probably pick one or at most
two of them to use.
Prompt #1. You know that a noun is the name of
a person, place or thing. Explain in 1-3 sentences what a collective
noun is. In your definition, give at least one example of
a collective noun. You have 2 minutes to write.
Prompt #2. Nouns and verbs are supposed to agree in number.
When the noun is a collective noun, writers sometimes have trouble
deciding whether the noun should be considered singular or plural.
In 1-4 sentences describe how a writer can decide whether a collective
noun needs a singular verb or a plural verb. You may give an example
to help you explain your point. You have 2 minutes to write.
Prompt #3. Suppose you were writing about the soccer team.
Would you say the team is practicing or the team are
practicing? Why? Respond in 1-3 sentenced. You have 2 minutes
to write.
3 prompts about apostrophes
These prompts all deal with apostropes, but they are not necessarily
sequential.
Prompt #1. Create a sentence in which you show an apostrophe
being used to show possession. Explain in 1-3 sentences what "showing
possession" means. Use the sentence you created as an example
to illustrate your definition. You have 2 minutes to write.
Prompt #2. Possessive nouns and possessive pronouns differ
in their use of apostrophes. In 1-4 sentences, explain the difference.
Illustrate your point by giving two examples of possessive nouns
and two examples of possessive pronouns.
Prompt #3. Explain how to make a word plural and
possessive. Create an example of a correctly formed plural possessive.
Use it to show the correct way to create plural possessives and
an incorrect way.
These informal writing prompts create formative assessments. The
responses give you a quick, immediate snapshot of what students
understood.
If they misunderstood, you should reteach the material in a different
way until your informal assessments show all students have caught
on.
created 23-Aug-2008; updated 11-Sep-2008
