Teaching and Assessing Writing 2

Aims To begin to consider key arguments about the most effective ways to assess writing Objectives Be aware of conflicting ideas of how to value and assess students’ writing

Examples of student work My Dad This is a piece of GCSE examination work What’s your response to this piece of writing? What would you say about what this writer can do? What’s effective about the writing? What constructive criticisms might you want to make? A Frightening Animal This is a piece of work produced in a Key Stage 3 SATs exam How do you respond to this piece? What can this writer do? What’s effective about the writing? What constructive criticisms might you want to make?

Two Contrasting Paradigms for the Teaching and Assessment of Writing, Pat D’Arcy D’Arcy’s booklet is a powerful critique of approaches to current dominant approaches to writing D’Arcy claims a ‘linguistic competence’ model is dominating, and has been, progressively, since 1995 Key features of this model include: A genre approach to teaching A focus on technical accuracy Explicit teaching of word, sentence and text level grammar A sense that by improving use of grammatical devices then quality of writing will improve A acceptance that direct grammatical instruction will result in better writing Judging the quality of writing on the ways in which students deploy devices D’Arcy traces the rise of this model through the National Curriculum rewrites, the NLS and KS3 Strategy, the QCA publications on Grammar and the Technical Accuracy Project

Two Contrasting Paradigms for the Teaching and Assessment of Writing, Pat D’Arcy For D’Arcy, the linguistic competence model misses much of what should be valued in students’ writing Additionally, it prohibits the development of children as writers by lacking a focus on what would be called the ‘process approach’ to writing D’Arcy illustrates this by looking at some examples of children’s work that have been used by QCA to help teachers with writing

Text 1: My Dad This is a piece of GCSE writing used in the TAP (Technical Accuracy Project) material Read the TAP commentary – how do you respond to this? Now read D’Arcy response. What do you make of this?

Text 2: A Frightening Animal This is from a KS3 sample markscheme Read the QCA commentary – what do you think of this? Read D’Arcy’s interpretation – how do you respond to this?

Concluding Thoughts D’Arcy argues that a balance needs to be struck between the two contrasting approaches. How far do you think this is possible? When teaching writing, think about what you are setting up – how will you motivate students, ensuring they have something they want to say and the means by which to say it?