8. ELA Group: Writing to Meet the Standards

Referencing the exemplars of student writing and
comparing it to some of our current rubrics 

We started Sunday morning by first locating the standard in the standards document, identifying key attributes that speak to this standard. This approach is a way of looking at writing to determine where it is along the spectrum of approximating the standard; it's just to get a sense of what the model is. She suggested that HS teachers look at the standards for literacy as well as the HS writing standards. We started by reading the grade 5 standard, then annotating a piece of student writing published in the appendix. Reactions to the process were mixed; is it reading response, standard 2, not writing 52a? Is it opinion, not informative/explanatory? Where do we find a balance with reading and open response? We then moved on to the 10th grade student sample, reading it carefully, annotating the text, and then comparing our responses to the student work to the language of the standards. since there was some question as to whether or not the fifth grade sample wholly stood as an exemplar, we wanted to see if this piece really measured up.

Close, careful examination of the current exemplars
of student writing was essential for determining the
precise language of the standards themselves; we found that
 it was far from a simple task.