Writing as Assessment

 

Benjamin Disraeli once said, "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it." Writing really is one of the best ways to learn, but, let's be honest: WRITING IS HARD. Even writing this blog post is hard. But, even though writing is hard, it is so useful and so worth it in the end.

Now, Mr. Disraeli, in the classroom, I don't think I will be asking my students to write an entire book in order to become acquainted with the material, but there will be significant amounts of writing. Why? Because I know that those things I wrote about when I was in middle and high school are the things I remember best.

In my English classes in middle school, I mainly remember poetry writing and some expository writing. My seventh-grade teacher did a poetry-writing unit in which we wrote haikus. To this day, I don't know why I love haikus so much. I loved them so much in seventh-grade that I kept my final copies of my haikus. Here is one example from my seventh-grade self:

Mountains

Towering Giants

Snow-capped in bright, white powder

Ruling all over

 

Ok. So maybe not so profound, but I still remember writing this poem and loving it.

 

 

High school brought about many, many, many, many, many, many essays. In my English classes, we wrote an essay about nearly every book, play, poem, or theme we discussed in class. We also wrote two major research papers, which ended up being my favorite writing assignment throughout all of high school. These research papers were way more intense than anything I have written in college. My classmates and I contemplated having t-shirts made saying "I survived Mrs. Pedersen's research paper." Yep. Super intense. But wonderful.

 

my friend's To Kill A Mockingbird final project

So, there was a lot of traditional writing in my high-school experience based heavily on content and mechanics. However, my teacher (my mom) understood that not everyone expresses themselves best through writing, nor is it necessary to always display your mastery of a concept through the medium of the written word. She also had us complete projects that showed our understanding of a book or any other concept in the class. For instance, when we read The Giver by Lois Lowry, our assignment was to create a diorama of one scene in the book. I had a blast using my brother's action figures along with some Barbie furniture to create a scene. Another project was to create a paper-plate mask after reading the masquerade scene in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. When I finished with this project, I felt like I understood the idea of identity and how we choose to present ourselves or conceal things about ourselves. A friend of mine who was in another section of my mom's class made a large picture frame by hand to represent the knot-hole tree in To Kill A Mockingbird and the symbolism of "framing" in the novel. He still has it, and it is GORGEOUS!

I think the combination of traditional, formal writing along with hands-on creative projects help to enrich our understanding of English---what it's all about, and how we can have a part in it. These two types of assessment measure many of the same abilities. Just as with essay or research writing, the projects assess a student's understanding of themes, understanding of characters, ability to organize ideas, ability to produce a finished product, and so on. Most of the national standards for writing correlate to "writing" in other venues. For instance, the Common Core standards require students to:

 

click here to see Common Core Writing Standards 

•  introduce a topic
• develop a topic
• clarify relationships
• use techniques such as metaphor, simile, analogy
• gather, integrate, and organize information

I believe all of these standards can be met through conventional writing as well as alternative methods. Sometimes, students can write with words, but other times they can write with images or with sound or with paint or with any other substance imaginable. To "write" means simply to express.

In order to give my students an opportunity to express in-depth understandings of English, I will ocsillate among expository writing, creative writing, hands-on projects, informal writing, artistic renditions, etc. Through these methods, I hope my students come to see that expression is exercise. Writing in any form takes effort, but the rewards of writing outweigh the costs.