State Testing Reflections - Prompt Writing as a Genre

I first heard about the idea of teaching writing to prompts as a genre from Sarah (The Reading Zone) and from Stacey (Two Writing Teachers). This year was the first year that I have had a class at the grade level to complete their actual state writing assessment. 

Before talking about my reflections on how my first writing to a prompt genre and how students did on their writing assessment, I want to give some background on my state's writing assessment. Hearing other teachers comment on their state assessments through blogging and college coursework, I realized that there can be significant differences in testing among states, so I thought some background might be helpful. In Oregon students participate in the state writing assessment to be scored by the state in 4th, 7th, and 10th grades. Students are scored using our state's writing traits scoring guide (my personal favorite is the 7th grade condensed bulleted version under the writing student language scoring guides). 7th graders are scored on: ideas and content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions on a scale from 1-6. However, voice and word choice are not calculated into the score and conventions is double weighted. Traditionally this process was completed with two raters independent of each other. However, this year and last with budget crunches, the 7th grade papers are scored once and then doubled. Students need a 40 to meet and a 50 to exceed. 

Throughout the whole year we talk about the traits, modes, and genres of writing through the natural process of writing workshop. Going right along with the concept that if students write widely and often they will do well on assessments, the prompt writing genre is truly able to focus on what is unique about writing for prompts, rather than what makes good writing in general. I use my state's resources, including sample prompts and examples of scored writing to familiarize students with what is required in able to meet or exceed on our state's assessment. I talk with students about how to look at a prompt and decide which mode of writing it is eliciting and help them make connections about what they know about what makes each mode unique, as well as the generalizations of strong writing for all modes. For example, they know that with expository writing they are explaining something, which takes on a different organizational set-up than if they choose narrative or imaginative where they will be telling a story, yet regardless of the mode the writing should always flow smoothly. 

I also talk to students about applying what they know about the writing process and what they prefer as a writer. When we are doing the genre writing unit we do not use our writer's notebooks. Instead, I talk to them about how they can use the same tools we use in their notebooks with regular notebook paper, which is what they can use on their state test and is also standard for other writing assessments at later stages in their life. Rather than guiding them through specific ways of gathering ideas as a class they do this on their own. While they have already done this various times throughout the year with their self-selected writing, I typically guide them through gathering ideas with new genres. However, the prompt writing genre is all about practicing writing independently, about taking what they know and shining as writers. 

When my students took their state writing assessment I was thrilled to see the pencils flying. All of my students had something to say. Nobody appeared to have writer's block. I know this would not have been the case without the combination of writer's workshop that values writing for authentic purposes on a daily basis coupled with a brief unit to prepare them for this specific genre. I was so proud of all of my students and how they have grown as students over the last two years. I look forward to continually improving my practices in writer's workshop and the prompt writing genre.