Chapter+3

[[image:butterfly%20d.gif]] Diagnosing and Assessing Writers
//"Varied designs and colors make each butterfly unique. Varied interests, styles, and skills make each writer unique."//


 * **Overview:** //Teachers in the content areas who assign writing tasks are often to the first to observe student writing problems and the many different writing personalities, behaviors, and feelings students bring to their writing assignments and formal assessments. Checklists, rubrics, scales, surverys, open-ended questions, portfolios, conferences, and Sixteen Words for the Wise can be helpful prescriptions when writing problems are diagnosed.//
 * **Knowing the Authors**
 * This chapter calls upon teachers complying with a cognitive approach that necessitates teachers to observe their students and the writing problems they may encounter. Even though cognitive scholars like Sommers, and Flower and Hayes perform studies that involve students doing their own observations of themselves, Chapman and King have simply placed that power of observation in the teachers’ hands in the hopes of improving student writing. However, they then shift the responsibility of assessing and evaluating students’ work onto the students, and their peers. Students should be critical, yet kind, evaluators of their peers, while learning to use assessment tools to assess their own strengths and weaknesses.
 * This chapter calls upon teachers complying with a cognitive approach that necessitates teachers to observe their students and the writing problems they may encounter. Even though cognitive scholars like Sommers, and Flower and Hayes perform studies that involve students doing their own observations of themselves, Chapman and King have simply placed that power of observation in the teachers’ hands in the hopes of improving student writing. However, they then shift the responsibility of assessing and evaluating students’ work onto the students, and their peers. Students should be critical, yet kind, evaluators of their peers, while learning to use assessment tools to assess their own strengths and weaknesses.


 * **Observable Behaviors & Prescriptions **


 * **Effective Assessment Tools**
 * Chapman and King offer some examples of assessment tools including, a class writing checklist, essay analysis, individual writing evaluation, rubrics, Likert Scales, student surveys, open-ended questions, and portfolios. This chapter contains examples of each of these assessment tools listed above, which I found to be a very useful instrument to future, as well as to a current teacher. I would use the information found in this chapter to promote the development of writers because not only does it contain helpful information, if provides useful and realistic examples, charts, and activities.
 * Essay Anaylsis
 * Individual Writing Evaluation
 * Essay Rubric
 * Likert Scales
 * Sixteen Words for the Wise