Alisha Tricarico Writing Assessment The purpose of conducting a writing assessment within an elementary classroom is to gain a better understanding

of the writing process of a child over an elapsed period of time. In order to see which concepts children understand, and how much a child can write on their own allows teachers to adjust instruction to meet student needs. Throughout the school year new writing concepts are constantly being introduced to students. Teachers look at what a child is capable of doing when first entering the classroom and continually look at their progress. I am currently placed in a kindergarten classroom, so the foundation of writing is just being introduced. Students are beginning to learn phonics and are stretching out words in order to spell them. Additionally, students are learning about the proper use of punctuation and when to use capital letters. By examining the concepts of writing within the kindergarten classroom, we can observe the significance of writing assessments in the curriculum. Right now, I am placed in a kindergarten classroom at Cambridge Elementary in South Brunswick, N.J. There are 20 students in this classroom, and the layout of the room consists of 4 tables with five students seated at each table. This allows for socialization and group work, which is critical at this age. Students are constantly engaging in conversation and play throughout the day. It is a very diverse classroom both academically and culturally. This is an inclusive classroom, but since these students are at such a young age, none have been given an IEP yet. However, three students are being referred for testing and pulled out of class each morning during handwriting. I am not informed as to what these students are working on outside of the classroom, but I am aware that they are being pulled into the resource room. I assessed a student named Bretton who is currently six years old. He is usually one of the first students to

finish his work whenever given an assignment. He is very talkative and loves reading his work to me. For this assessment I obtained a writing piece that Bretton wrote during his first week of Kindergarten, and I compared it to a writing piece that he wrote for a lesson that I had taught. I thought about all of the writing concepts that have been drilled during the time that I spent within the classroom and referred to those concepts when assessing his work. I additionally looked at some writing standards that kindergarten students should master by the end of the year. For example, they should use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts; in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic. I not only looked at the letters and word itself, but also the amount that was written on the page about a certain topic. Overall there was a lot of progress in Brettons writing. In his first writing sample it was almost impossible to understand what he wanted to say. The words were not spelt correctly and it was obvious he did not know a lot about phonics. His words were squished together; there were no punctuation and no differentiation between capital and lower case letters. When he wrote dad the D was not facing the correct direction. One thing that Bretton did correctly, and is still is capable of doing, is matching his words to his drawings. In both the old and current writing piece his drawing agreed with his sentence. When I looked at his current writing sample a lot had changed. There were spaces between his words and a lot fewer spelling errors. He is now using the method of stretching out his words, and is more aware of what letters represent certain sounds. His writing has more depth, rather than being just I help my dad wait for Santa clause. His current writing piece says, I clean up my trash for the earth can be clean. Although his sentence is a little grammatically incorrect, he expanded on his idea.

Some concepts that Bretton may need to work on are when to capitalize words and phonics. It is common for children to over-generalize a new concept, and that is just what is is doing with capitalization. It is concluded that he is now more aware of the foundation of writing. He is able to space out his words correctly and use punctuation appropriately. This can inform instruction in various ways. The teacher can place students into writing groups based upon their strengths and weaknesses. Bretton could be placed with students who need to work on when to use capitalization appropriately. The teacher can then go around during writing time and focus on those concepts with each particular group.