This article focuses on the 2019 National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) assessment of student ability in writing. It begins with an overview of the study and its results, then turns to students' use of planning strategies to support their writing. Drawing on research on the association between planning and achievement in writing,…

Until now, geography teaching has only touched upon the way in which students write argumentations focused on geographical topics, and the challenges of doing this. In order to shed light on this process, this study considers the problems and challenges students face when using material-based written argumentation in geography lessons. The results…

Scenario-based writing assessment has two salient characteristics by design: a lead-in/essay scaffolding structure and a unified scenario/topic throughout. In this study, we examine whether the scenario-based assessment design would impact students' essay scores compared to its alternative conditions, which intentionally broke the scaffolding…

This study investigates the effects of a scenario-based assessment design on students' writing processes. An experimental data set consisting of four design conditions was used in which the number of scenarios (one or two) and the placement of the essay task with respect to the lead-in tasks (first vs. last) were varied. Students' writing…

Developed to evaluate secondary school students' writing fluency skills, this study is descriptive in nature and uses a mixed method approach. During the research, the researcher attempted to identify students' abilities to write in terms of quantity and complexity, on the one hand, and also attempted to identify findings on accuracy, the…

In this report, we examine the feasibility of characterizing writing performance using process features derived from a keystroke log. Using data derived from a set of "CBAL"™ writing assessments, we examine the following research questions: (a) How stable are the keystroke timing and process features across testing occasions?; (b) How…

This paper explores automated methods for measuring features of student writing and determining their relationship to writing quality and other features of literacy, such as reading rest scores. In particular, it uses the "e-rater"™ automatic essay scoring system to measure "product" features (measurable traits of the final…

The purpose of the 2011 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) Writing Framework is to describe how the new NAEP Writing Assessment is designed to measure students' writing at grades 4, 8, and 12. As the ongoing national indicator of the academic achievement of students in the United States, NAEP regularly collects information on…

Teachers across the country consider the best methods to teach writing in the middle school and high school. They aspire for students to produce writing aimed at real audiences and purposes, writing that follows the author's thinking and leads readers to discoveries about the topic. Many teachers believe that a formula in writing could offer…

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of formulaic writing such as the five-paragraph theme (FPT) or essay for the purpose of earning high scores on high-stakes writing assessments. This qualitative descriptive study analyzed more than 1000 essays from Delaware Grade 8 and 10 writers, written for a statewide…

Students in Grades 5 and 8 completed a 30-minute writing performance assessment and a writing performance assessment completed over 3 days. Assessments were evaluated on four traits (ideas, organization, conventions, and sentence fluency). A significant interaction was found at Grade 5 between length of time allotted for the assessment and…

This guide outlines the writing procedures for English Composition Pupil Performance Objective assessments and tests in grades 4, 8, and 10 of the Ottawa County (Ohio) school system. Procedures for both students and teachers are included for the prewriting, first draft writing, and revising/rewriting sessions. (MM)

Having students express their understanding of difficult, new material in their own words is an effective method to deepen their comprehension and learning. Summary Street[R] is a computer tutor that offers a supportive context for students to practice this activity by means of summary writing, guiding them through successive cycles of revising…

Presents the Wilkinson Scales for writing assessment and shows how one eighth grade student's essay, using the scales, can be evaluated for grammatical and mechanical problems without devaluing the emotion that went into its composition. (JC)

Recently a number of writers and researchers have praised the editing and text moving capabilities of word processing programs, proposing that they can be useful in helping students revise more readily and skillfully. With this premise, 16 eighth grade students participated in a program in which they used a text editor or word processing system to…