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>>SARA KERSTEN: This is our writing assessment that you have to do for your case study.
This is a must-do assessment with your child.
And this is the rubric that you will be using.
It is called the '6-Trait Assessment for Beginning Writers', sometimes called the 'BWC'.
And I'm just going to go through each of these and then we're going to grade one together,
so you understand how to grade for your case study and how to do the response activity.
So there are actually seven traits on this, sort of funny.
But we have: 'Ideas', 'Organization', 'Voice', 'Word Choice', 'Sentence Fluency',
'Conventions', and 'Presentation'.
Those are the traits that you are going to be looking at in the writing.
We're going to see if the writing has these traits.
When you go through these traits, you're also going to be looking at their scoring.
Are they 'Experimenting', which is a 1.
'Emerging', which is 2.
'Developing', which is 3.
'Capable', which is 4.
And 'Experienced', which is 5.
So this is the five score rubric that you are going to use.
And through each trait, for instance the trait 'Idea':
there are many different things that you want to look for.
You're going to be looking at each one and you're going to be putting checkmarks,
and you have to go though the entire document to grade your paper.
We're going to do partial grading of one to give you guys an idea.
For instance, this is a students writing sample.
You are going to have your students do a writing sample.
You can get prompts from online,
you can Google writing prompts for kindergarteners or
writing prompts for first-graders just to find a good prompt.
The best writing prompt is something that is very specific.
You do not want a broad prompt.
So, this is what one kid wrote.
I do not know the prompt for this one.
He wrote: There was a very big room.
Our room was on the second floor.
Our room number was 210.
The third time we went swimming,
me and my friend had the pool to ourselves.
We went to the arcade.
It's pretty good.
So, I'm looking at it, and one thing you want to look for is spelling.
You want to see if they wrote neatly, like in a straight line.
Is the writing crooked? How do they do with their formation of the letters?
Sentence structure.
Does the story make sense? Is it confusing?
And then how do they do with grammar?
Those are what we're going to go through.
So, I'm going to start with my first trait, which is 'Ideas'.
I'm going to start looking through the first one: 'Uses scribbles for writing'.
No, so I'm going to go around, 'Some recognizable words', 'Attempts a story or to
make a point', or 'Writing tells a story or makes a point'.
Well, I don't really think there's a story here because he talks about being on the
second floor and then he all of a sudden is swimming. There's no story.
So, I'm going to give this kid, for 'Ideas', I'm going to check it right there.
Now I'm going to go to the next one. It talks about illustration.
There are no illustrations so I can disregard.
If you have kindergarteners or first graders, you might want them to do an
illustration to help them with their writing, but this kid was a second or third grader.
He did not need to do that.
So, I'm going to go to the next one.
This talks about drawings, so 'Meaning of the general idea is recognizable/understandable',
or 'Idea is generally on topic', or 'Uses interesting, important details for support'.
And then this is too basic.
So, I'm going to give him a 3 again for this one.
Because his idea is not 'on topic'. I understand what he's writing,
he could possibly be talking about being at a summer camp where they went swimming,
but there's some semblance of an idea.
So, I'm going to go to the last one.
This still talks about pictures and letters, so I can move on.
So, 'Some ideas clear but some are still fuzzy',
'Details are present but not developed', or 'Writer understands topic well'.
He definitely does not have a 5, so I'm going to say it's between a 4 or a 3.
I'm going to give him a 3 again, because I sort of know what he's talking about, but not really.
So, right now for the trait 'Ideas', he has the most check marks under '3'.
So, he's going to get a 3 for ideas.
And that's how you do it. You might have check marks all over the place in every
single numerical column, which is okay.
You just end up choosing the column that has the most check marks.
So now I'm going to go down to 'Voice'.
You have to do 'Organization', but I'm going to do 'Voice' now.
So we're going to look through here,
Communicates feeling with size, color, shape line.
No, not really.
Hints of voice present in words and phrases,
Expresses some feelings. Predictable feelings.
Writing is individual and expressive.
And uses text to elicit a variety of emotions.
There isn't really much emotion in here.
He just tells a lot about what he did.
Not how he felt about it.
I'm not really getting a big sense of excitement about what was going on.
So it is not individual or expressive-- sort of predictable.
I'm actually going to give him a two for emerging hints of voice present in words or phrases.
Meaning, I don't really see a personality behind his writing.
I mean, I'm not really getting who he is or why he's writing this,
so I'm giving him a two.
I'm going to go on to the next category.
'Looks different from most others'
'Moments of individual sparkle but then hides'
'Individual perspective becomes evident.'
Or, takes some risk.
Well, there is no risk.
So I can go back to two and three here.
So, 'individual sparkle', I don't really see it.
To me, it's just very... He's telling us what he did.
So, I'm actually just going to give him a 2 again.
So, going down.
And then going to the next category: 'Repetition of familiar ideas reduces energy',
and 'Personal treatment of a standard topic'.
'Point of view is evident', 'Writes with a clear sense of audience'.
Going through, I'm actually going to give him a 3,
'Repetition of familiar ideas reduces energy'.
Just because it's very stagnant, "There is a room. It was on the second floor.
The number." He just keeps it very... It's almost like he's giving us a list.
So, I'm going to give him a 3 for that one and then I'm going to keep going.
So, for instance, 'Audience is Fuzzy - could be anybody, anywhere', 'Reader has a
limited connection to the writer', 'Point of view', 'Cares deeply'.
I'm going to give him 'Audience is fuzzy - Could be anybody, anywhere'.
I don't really know who he's writing for.
I've skipped one, 'Treatment of Topic is predictable',
'Awareness that the writing will be read by someone else', 'Writes to convey a story'.
I'm going to give him a 3 for this.
You have to know that there is no right or wrong answer when grading
and doing the rubric for writing.
You just have to use your best judgment.
I'm going to be looking for: Did you fill this out correctly? Did you fill it out?
So, I think, does he know someone else is going to be reading it?
Because he is telling us about something.
But I look at this and I have checkmarks in two categories,
but most of my checkmarks are in 2. So he's going to get a 2 for 'Voice'.
And I would do this for every single trait.
So there is word choice, conventions, sentence fluency, alright?
Then the last one of course we can go over.
Let me just go ahead and do one more to show you.
I can do 'Conventions', which is where we get into the grammar, if you will.
So, this talks about, 'Attempts semi-phonetic spelling', 'Uses phonetic spelling',
and 'Traditional spelling'. He's actually a very good speller.
He only misses a few derivational consistencies and syllable juncture words.
I'm actually going to give him a 4, for capable transitional spelling.
So, 'Spelling of high frequency words still spotty', actually, no.
He did a really good job of most of his words here.
He misspells some, but I'm sort of impressed.
So I'm actually going to give him a 4, "High frequency words usually correct."
And then, 'Capitals at the beginning of sentences and variable use of proper nouns'.
He does have a random capital 't' there...
But there aren't any uses of proper nouns really.
So, I'm going to move that back to a 3.
And then, 'Usually uses end punctuation correctly', 'Random punctuation',
and 'Punctuation attempted'.
Well, he only has periods, so I'm just going to give him a 3. He uses it correctly.
He doesn't 'Experiment with other punctuation', but,
'Long paper may be written as one paragraph', that can be a problem.
You can go through each of these and whichever column I have the most
checkmarks in, that's the score he's going to get for 'Conventions'.
Once you've done all seven of the traits, you need to look back and see which
numbers you have the most of.
Do you have the most 3's, the most 2's, the most 4's?
Whichever number you have the most of for each trait is the final number for his paper.
So if I end up giving him a 3 for this, and he got a 3 for 'Sentence Fluency',
and a 2 here, and a 3 here, I would go back and go,
"Oh yeah, he has a 3, a 3, a 3, and he got a 3 here."
He has more 3's then he has 2's. So this student got a 3 total on his writing sample.
So, that's how you would grade it.
Now for your activities that you're doing for your response, this is your writing sample.
The one you have you're going to be able to see a little bit better, but it's much longer.
It's written by a fourth grader.
You're going to go through and you are going to grade it like this and you're going to
tell me why you gave her the score that you gave her.
You're going to be scanning this end as your response activity.
So, you're going to be going through each category and defending why you gave her
the scores for each trait, and then her final score.
But this is the paper that you will be using.
So, I hope this will explain better how to do the writing sample
and how to do your response activity.