Writing to Learn and Assessment Prompts: What’s the Connection?

Cindy Riedl
May 18, 2009

"Writing is not simply a way for students to demonstrate what they know. It is a way to help them understand what they know. At its best, writing is learning." (National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges 2003)

Consider the implications of this quote. If students are to truly learn, they must write in all content areas - but when? Assessment prompts cause us to consider and plan ways to assess learning as we teach chunks of content. Short writes, such as using writing to learn strategies for distributed summarizing during the lesson and clarifying key learning at the end of the lesson, address the need to periodically assess learning for intervention and immediate feedback. This informs us about when to adjust instruction during the lesson and assures that students are internalizing the content as it was intended throughout the lesson.

Now consider what students tend to learn, according to the Learning Pyramid, in terms of active involvement - 90% of what they say and do. Writing is doing 'the real thing'. It directly addresses three of the five most important instructional strategies:  extending thinking skills, summarizing and advance organizers. Schools that have the greatest gains in student performance and achievement are schools where writing is present in every subject, not just in English classes. Assessment prompts scattered throughout the lesson that require a written response hit multiple targets, so why are we not doing it? It takes too much time to stop and write? Think about this - if taking the time means an increase in student learning, does it not make sense to bite the bullet and take the time? The clock is ticking - your clock. Time should not be used as an excuse for not doing something we know has been PROVEN to work. So, let's get on with it!

A little review is in order for those of us who are not familiar with how to develop an assessment prompt. Simply take the Lesson Essential Question and, instead of asking yourself what it will look or sound like when your students answer it, ask yourself what your students need to know and be able to do to answer it. Here is an example. LEQ:  What is the job of an adjective? Students need to know assessment prompt 1: Senses - assessment prompt 2: Describing words - assessment prompt 3: What an adjective is - assessment 4: Uses of adjectives. After instruction of the content necessary to examine our senses and words that we use to describe them, students select a Sentence Stem to write a journal entry, i.e. 'I have just learned ...,' 'If I used the sense of ______, I would use describing words like ...'. Assessment prompts 3 and 4 could be assessed together as students take the role of an adjective and write a letter to a noun to explain the job of an adjective with examples.

Responses to assessment prompts should be short, informal writing during the learning process. The purpose is for students to think about the learning by summarizing, clarifying, explaining, posing questions, building connections, revealing confusion, shaping meaning and reaching understanding. Identifying the assessment prompts, what students need to know, allows the teacher to chunk the content of the lesson. After each chunk of instruction, students could do a Think-Pair-Share (Numbered Heads) to demonstrate what they learned, but Think-Ink-Pair-Share assures greater retention and depth of what they are learning. At least one assessment prompt should be addressed using a written response in a lesson - more is GREAT!

Examples of 'Writing to Learn' and 'Summary Point Writing'

Anticipatory Guide Reflection:  Students revisit their responses from the activating strategy and use new knowledge to write their conclusions and explain why.

Summary Point Writing:  Pause after a chunk of content and ask students to write about the most important information they learned, i.e. summarizing information up to this point.

Q & A:  Ask a question and have students write a sentence that answers the question using information just learned.

Structured Note-taking:  Provide a structure, such as two-column notes. After a chunk of content, have students write a summary, paraphrase or create a question for another student to answer about the content.

Key Word Acrostic:  Write the concept taught in the chunk of content. Student construct sentences that reflect key points taught for every letter of the word.

The Absent Student:  Students explain in a letter to the absent student the key learning they missed or how to follow steps in a process.

R.A.F.T:  Role:  Rain Drop - Audience:  Other Rain Drops - Format:  A travel itinerary - Topic:  Water Cycle

Build A Meaningful Sentence:  Students are given key vocabulary or a concept from the lesson and are asked to "build" a sentence that uses the words and summarizes the learning.

Remember:  Keep it simple and engaging! For more ideas, examine LEARNING-FOCUSED Writing Assignments books in the Literacy Collection.