Using Writing to Check for Understanding Across All Content Areas
Using Writing to Check for Understanding Across All Content Areas
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Writing is thinking. Writing allows teachers to check student understanding for content and ideas by using the correct type of prompts. Using writing across the curriculum is a valuable assessment tool. Most teachers use writing strictly to teach writing, for the sake of writing alone.
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Writing has two very distinct goals: 1) the normal and conventional goal is writing to demonstrate learning, for example, in essay exams to actively demonstrate how much students have learned in a course, unlike short answer or multiple-choice tests that do not demonstrate student knowledge accurately 2) Another type of writing is writing for learning, the purpose being to help students learn, understand, remember, and figure out what they do not yet know. This kind of writing promotes learning and involving students in the course material and helps them clarify their thinking and their understanding.
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Writing assessments focus on three areas commonly used in classrooms everywhere: narrative writing which tells a story, expository writing which informs the reader, and argumentative writing which persuades the reader. These are taught as genres and therefore the emphasis is on the form of the piece.
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What we want to do more frequently, is to begin using writing to check for understanding means looking at how the form and content interact. When doing this, the ability to narrate, to inform, or to persuade becomes a mechanism for looking at the ways in which students understand.
Writing Strategies to Check for Understanding
During content area instruction, student writing can be used to determine what students know, what they still need to know, and what they are confused about.
Interactive Writing
Interactive writing allows students to share the pen with the teacher. After agreeing on a message orally, students take turns writing on a dry erase board or on chart paper. Interactive writing flows from ideas to spoken words to printed messages. First, the writers discuss the topic and agree on a message, which takes ideas and moves them into spoken words. The teacher then asks students to come to the board and write a section of the message on it. This can be a letter, a word, or a phrase. Each writer finishes and the whole group reads the message aloud, already written in their minds. While each student writes, the teacher provides related instruction to the rest of the class.
Read-Write-Pair-Share
Read-write-pair-share focuses on print-based literacy skills while encouraging partners to discuss and make meaning of content. Students read the material, write in response to this information, engage in a partner conversation about what they have read and written, and then share their ideas with the whole class. Along the way, the teacher can check for understanding.
Summary Writing
Summary writing is valuable for checking for understanding because it provides the teacher with insight into how learners condense information. Also referred to as retelling, summary writing serves as a way for students to demonstrate their ability to recapitulate what they have read, viewed, or done. This process can lead to higher levels of understanding. The ability to write for accuracy and conciseness is a good indicator of the writer’s knowledge of the topic and control over the form.
RAFT
RAFT writing-to-learn prompts provide students with an opportunity to clarify their thinking and to allow the teacher to peek inside their heads and check for understanding. The prompts provide a scaffold for students as they explore their writing based on various roles, audiences, formats, and topics. Students consider the following prompts:
Role: What is the role of the writer?
Audience: To whom is the writer writing.
Format: What is the format for the writing?
Topic: What is the focus of the writing?
The prompts are typically used to teach perspective in writing but can also be used to check understanding. For example, if a third-grade teacher wanted to know if students understood the life cycle of insects, she might use the following prompt:
Role:?butterfly
Audience: scientist
Format: journal entry
Topic: my experience with complete metamorphosis
Sample Writing-To-Learn Prompts
Sample prompts include the following:
Admit slips: Upon beginning the class, students write on an assigned topic.
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Crystal ball: Students describe what they think lesson will be about, what might happen next in the novel they are reading, or the next step in a science lab.
Found poems: Students reread a piece of text, either something they have written, or something published, and find key phrases. They arrange these into a planned structure without aiding any new words.
Awards: Students recommend someone or something for an award that the teacher has created such as "most helpful molecule " or "most insidious leader."
Yesterday's news: Students summarize the information presented the day before in a film, lecture, discussion, or reading.
Take a stand: Students discuss their opinions or share their point of view about a subject or controversial topic.
Letters: Students write letters to others, including elected officials, family members, friends, or people who have made a difference.
Exit slips: As a closure activity, students write on an assigned prompt.
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Online Tools for Using Writing to Check Understanding
Nearpod
Nearpod is extremely interactive and allows you to edit lessons and add white boards and other tools check for understanding of all students at once. This is what we speak about when we say, 100% overt response is our goal. Kids love it and so will you!
Google Jamboard
Interactive White Board that let users post on a bulletin.
Jamboard to upload a worksheet activity and be able to interact with the worksheet collaboratively.
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Socrative
Socratic Seminars are soon to be implemented into our units, so I encourage teachers to experiment with this tool to spark conversation. We need to get students more involved by sharing opinions and learning. There are also user-created polls and quizzes. Students access questions via a Room Code. The answers register immediately on the teacher's computer as students submit their responses from almost any device.
Padlet
This is a valuable tool for something quick to get students engaged. I am seeing teachers use this regularly when they notice the energy of the class drop and they want to check it with students. Most frequently it is used for an online “Exit Ticket” or mid- way chunk “Formative Assessment.”?
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Miro
This is a great tool when you need to have teams work in collaborative groups. This operates by using a whiteboarding platform.
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Summary
In summary, writing strategies can and should be used to check for understanding in every content area. Some of the styles of use are 1) Interactive writing 2) Read-Write-Pair-Share 3) Summary Writing 4) RAFT and 5) Writing to Learn Prompts. There are a number of online tools for use with implementing this practice immediately and there are a number of IGS recommended resources all detailed for you in this article. I look forward to seeing and hearing of the amazing ways you are accelerating learning by using writing to check for understanding.?