This week I conducted my first assessments for an entire third grade class. The assessments were whole group and required the students to complete two writing samples. The first as a journal writing experience about anything they would like, I gave the students various examples of topics to allow each to write enough to assess. During the assessment, I noticed that there were several students with very little written and seemed to be inexperienced with journal writing. I provided encouragement and repeated the task to remind students to stay focused on their writing. Many students raised their hand and asked me for help spelling words, in reaction to which I stated, “Spell your words the best you can. I want to see what you can do!” This encouraged the students and refocused them on the task.
Implementation of the second assessment was highly successful with the class. Students understood the task and worked independently to number their paper, focus on me, and write the sentences. Students continued to ask how to spell things and, due to the varying phonetic skills in the assessment, I repeated the sentences as many times as they needed. I justified this support to myself by deciding that this was an assessment of writing and phonics ability, not ability to remember an entire sentence or ability to focus on the teacher. These are important characteristics of each individual participant but are not the focus of the research project.
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