Assessing Writing – Making it simple and manageable
It’s probably best to start this article by acknowledging that assessing children’s writing can be challenging. After all, there is a lot to consider including the children’s technical skills in handwriting, punctuation and spelling, and their creative skills in writing effectively for a range of purposes and audiences. Furthermore, there are the pressures of Statutory Assessment at the end of Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, and the need to show attainment and progress in the intervening year groups too. Needless to say, assessing children’s writing becomes a high-pressure job that many teachers find extremely daunting. So, what can we at Primary English do to help? Here are a few of our thoughts.
Assessing writing – be clear about the role of the TAFs
The Teacher Assessment Frameworks are provided for use by teachers at the end of Year 2 and Year 6. Their purpose being to enable teacher assessment of writing for the Statutory Assessments Tests (SATs). If you’re familiar with the TAFs, you’ll know that they don’t include all objectives from the National Curriculum. Instead, they summarise some of the key skills that children will have acquired over the duration of their primary education. The TAFs are not a substitute for the National Curriculum – they simply don’t include all the content that you need to teach.
Because they are designed for assessing writing at the end of Year 2 and Year 6, the TAFs cannot be used in Years 1, 3, 4 and 5. Attempting to do so will leave gaps but will also cause confusion as you’ll be aiming to assess some objectives that children will not yet have encountered in the National Curriculum. It’s certainly a good idea to know what’s included in the TAFs but don’t use them for teaching or assessing unless you are making judgements at the end of Key Stage 1 or Key Stage 2.
Assessing writing – know the National Curriculum
It seems obvious but checking in with the National Curriculum is essential if you are going to assess writing effectively. This includes knowing the grammar, punctuation and vocabulary covered in your year group as well as the expectations for written composition. For example, did you know there is no mention of genre in the writing objectives? Instead, children are asked to write for different purposes in Key Stage 1, and in Key Stage 2 for different audiences also.
Appendix 2: Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation is important to all teachers, but if you’re in Key Stage 2, it’s the only place where you’ll get a clear view of which aspects of grammar should be taught (and assessed) in each year group.
Assessing writing – building subject knowledge
If you’re going to assess children’s writing, you need to know what all that terminology in the National Curriculum (and the TAFs if you’re in Year 2 or Year 6) means. The very handy glossary included in the National Curriculum is a great place to start.
Knowing how to break those objectives down so that they make sense to children is also vital. We’ll share something to help you with this later in this article.
Assessing writing – building a picture over time
Teachers, quite rightly, like to assess children’s writing at different points over the school year. This is how they identify gaps for individuals and groups of children, and how they can judge the success of the teaching they have undertaken through analysis of children’s writing.
The objectives in the national curriculum are pitched for what children will achieve at the end of the year, which can make assessing against them, particularly in the Autumn Term, rather messy. This takes us back to breaking down objectives – it’s really very useful indeed to be able to break objectives into smaller steps to show how children’s learning grows over time. It also helps us as teachers as it ensures that we build knowledge over time through multiple exposures and deepening understanding. It helps makes teaching and learning manageable.
Assessing writing – keeping it manageable
At Primary English we work hard to support teachers and make their lives easier. We know that assessing writing can be complicated and time consuming which is why we’ve developed the Primary English Writing Assessment Grids. The grids cover each year group in Key Stages 1 and 2. They take the writing objectives from the National Curriculum and present them in an easy-to-use grid. Each objective is tracked across the three terms of the academic year. Objectives are broken down where necessary and accompanied with examples to help build subject knowledge and teacher confidence. The Primary English Writing Assessment Grids are supportive to teachers in all year groups, but particularly Years 1, 3, 4 and 5 who might otherwise find themselves trying to assess against the TAFs.
You can download the Year 3 Writing Assessment Grids free of charge here with the other Writing Assessment Grids available individually or as part of our great value bundle.
