You may have heard your little guy/gal talking about their big "writing test" this week. Both grades are doing a recount writing piece to be evaluated by their homeroom teacher and another grade level teacher at the school (otherwise known as our writing benchmark). We do writing benchmarks for many reasons. The main reason being to find out where the kids are in their writing. We break down writing into 5 parts in grades 1 and 2. The 5 parts are content (overall topic, focus and details), organisation, word choice, sentence structure and conventions (spelling, punctuation, capitals-our 5 stars basically). As the writing has been broken down into parts, I can see where our kids are doing well and where we need to improve. I use the evaluation to see what they can do in writing and what I need to focus on with them. Two teachers evaluate the writing (using the same rubric based on grade level expectations) to be certain that we are "on the same page" with our marking for our grade level. We don't want to mark too hard or too easy!
The kids are actually excited to have another teacher see their work. The grade ones have completely finished their writing and the grade twos are working on their good copies. I am very pleased with the work they have completed all by themselves with absolutely no help.
Mrs. Ashley Daley-Creamer
