- Welcome to the final segment in our three part series
discussing the implications
of the Australian Writing Survey in Queensland.
The survey was conducted in partnership
between the Department of Education
and the Institute of Learning Sciences
and Teacher Education, or ILSTE between 2016 and 2017.
The survey drew responses and insights
from dedicated teachers all over the state
and maybe useful in generating discussion
about how writing is taught and assessed in your school.
Throughout this series,
Pascalle has looked at considerations
around building a positive school-wide writing culture
as well as how teachers dispositions as writers
can impact on how they teach writing.
And today in our final instalment,
she'll be looking at clarifying expected features
of writing quality.
I'd encourage you to reflect on your school's shared
metalanguage of writing and how monitoring writing regularly
can be used to adjust instruction, to inform differentiation
and to produce better learning outcomes for students.
- Understanding what quality writing looks like is complex.
A key consideration of the Australian Writing Survey
is clarifying the expected features of writing quality
and using this to assess the quality of students' writing
and to provide purpose for feedback in this segment
and because writing is embedded within the curriculum.
Note that when we talk about assessing students' writing
unless it is explicitly measured
in summative assessment tasks,
we're referring to low stakes formative assessment
using formal or informal monitoring tasks
to guide ongoing teaching
and learning of writing within the curriculum.
As mentioned in an earlier segment
the findings of the survey were presented by ILSTE
in their seminar reframing the middle years slump,
which can be accessed online.
The analysis indicated that to leverage improvement
and meet the needs of all learners, schools might reflect
on how they establish a shared middle language for teaching
and assessing writing
and align curriculum pedagogy and assessment.
Klenowski and Wyatt-Smith
say that assessment requires teachers
to draw on their professional knowledge and expertise
to arrive at judgements of quality.
But how do we know what to look for in students' writing,
what to ask them to write
and how to evaluate its effectiveness.
Unsurprisingly, to develop a cohesive picture of what
and how students should write as they move through school.
It's vital to know the Australian Curriculum
including Australian Curriculum English
and the general capabilities literacy
which is applied through the content of the learning areas.
By looking at the English sequence of achievement standards
and content across year levels.
Teachers can see where their students should be,
what the previous year level focused on,
and where students will aim to next.
For a more fine-grained view of writing behaviour
across the stages of schooling
that aligns with the Australian Curriculum.
The department provides the P-10 literacy continuum
including the aspects of writing
and vocabulary knowledge markers.
The continuum offers a set of benchmarks to support teachers
in monitoring students' literacy development
and can be used in two ways in relation to writing:
to individually monitor student writing samples
and to plan to teach
and monitor the writing demands of the curriculum.
The continuum's interactive functionality in one school
offers tools such as the student progress tracker
and the marker collection tool
to gather valuable literacy data,
to inform planning for individual students,
classes or cohorts.
Once there are inroads for understanding
what to look for and teach
it's essential to have a shared metalanguage
among teachers and students.
For example, staff could share writing samples
and develop a grade commentaries
about the writing quality and features
or use student-friendly terms
to talk about writing in the classroom.
A shared metalanguage can impact the validity,
reliability, transparency, and authenticity of assessment
where teachers have clarity
about the kind of writing they ask of students
and students have clarity
about what is being assessed and why.
Another benefit is that it can help students
monitor their own writing.
Here are three strategies developed by Black and William
to guide formative assessment
that maximises the chances of teachers
making accurate judgements about student writing
and adjusting their instruction
in ways that promote student learning.
The first is to clarify
and share learning intentions and criteria for success.
These includes: designing a fit for purpose task,
ensuring the purpose is clear,
sharing and discussing exemplars with students,
and developing suitable rubrics or checklists
to guide evaluation, target feedback
and let students know what you're looking for.
The second strategy,
is to engineer effective classroom discussions
and other learning tasks
that elicit evidence of student understanding.
Klenowski and Wyatt-Smith
remind us that it's vital to consider
the relationship between the monitoring task set
and the evidence required.
Wilson suggests that gathering evidence
could range from: informal questioning in class,
pre- and post-tests and to other regular writing activities
such as writing prompts, brief writes or exit tickets
to monitor how students have understood
and applied the concepts in the lesson,
including writing skills and strategies.
And the third strategy is to provide feedback
that moves learners forward,
which Wyatt-Smith says offers students a sense of firmness
to proceed with confidence.
Wilson says that effective feedback should vary in manner,
focus and timing to suit what is required
so that it helps the writer gauge their performance,
identify what should be done, to close the gap between
current performance and the learning goal
and suggest ways of moving forward.
Varying the manner combines direct feedback
where the teacher explicitly states
what is and isn't working and perhaps corrects the work,
facilitative feedback such as guiding questions
or reminders of key criteria and praise.
While praise is the least effective manner of feedback
it can encourage and build trust
between student and teacher.
Wilson acknowledges, there are lots of different things
to comment on in writing and stresses the need
to focus on the most suitable level of feedback.
Lower-level skills include: spelling, punctuation
and sentence structure.
Higher-level skills include: word choice,
text organisation, and style.
Feedback can also be given about writing strategies,
such as planning and editing.
Choosing the best focus
for the purpose of a monitoring tasks
can mean the difference
between spending time correcting spelling errors
or providing feedback about the impact
of a student's opening paragraph.
The more suitable and timely the feedback
the more effective it will be.
When students are able to apply feedback immediately,
this is called the practise feedback loop.
Sometimes evaluation takes time however,
and Wilson suggests including tasks
that are quick to evaluate
or involve peer or self evaluation.
Speaking of time,
thank you for your time in watching this series
on the Australian Writing Survey.
The curriculum teaching and learning literacy team
will continue to respond to the outcomes of the survey
and the current research
about the teaching of writing in schools.
I hope this ED TV series has been helpful
in informing and clarifying your school's plans
for writing improvement.
- [Announcer] This segment has been informed
by the following research,
for more research based support regarding teaching writing
visit the department's literacy P-12 site,
the how to teach writing online module,
the reading and writing centre, or the getting kids writing
one sentence at a time ed studio.