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Jigsaw: NAEP Facts

NAEP Facts

“Can Students Benefit From Process Writing?” Vol. 1, No. 3

This article is a prime example of transactional writing. There is definite focus, goal and specific audience in mind. The NAEP =National Assessment of Educational Progress

Summary:

Highest average writing scores were associated with teachers who implemented process writing and pre-writing activities. These said pre-writing and process writing activities are collectively referred to as “process-oriented instruction.”

The article discusses the Recursive Process. This process is described as

1.) Planning 2.) writing 3.) review

First draft.

4.) More planning 5.) More ideas 6.) More writing

Second draft.

Studies show that more planning and reviewing a student does, the better their writing will be. 

This assessment only evaluates the first round of the process. This may explain why most of the scores equated to only a 50%, because only half of the process was carried out. This assessment asks students to embrace their recursive processes, and asks teachers to expose their students to as many different processes and prewriting activities as possible, and yet, doesn’t assess these fully. Even professional writers may not perform so well on an assessment such as this one, for this is not how they write. Although the NAEP has done research showing that the more pre-writing and planning activities done prior to writing the better the score, they are still testing the same. This assessment doesn’t take into account the process that they state needs to be carried out in order to write well. All the NAEP does to advocate the writing process is provide the student with a blank page to doodle, outline, or draft upon. Participants of this test have to write in a vacuum, with no time to  engage others and fully revise their essays. They can however demonstrate their abilities to plan and outline a paper. Our group was slightly confused as to whether the usage of this blank paper earned points, or legitimately helped students write a better paper. A lot of our questions were geared towards how the NAEP assessed good writing. What is the criterion for getting a score of 500 of this test? What does a “500” essay look like?

If these questions were answered, our “take-away” may be different…but for now, here is what we took away from this article’s findings.

The take away:

The emphasis is placed upon teachers. It is our responsibility to expose students to a wide variety of process writing strategies.  Teachers need to expose students to a range of possibilities that they can think and process their own writing. There is not exactly a correct process, but there is strength in the presence of a process.  The earlier we expose students to these processes and writing strategies, the more equipped they will be to write a better essay…or one that the NAEP will give a higher score to? I personally am still a bit confused by the connections made in this article. I want to know what the NAEP is looking for exactly and that would help me understand. 

Here is a quote from the article that supports our “take away.”

“Students of teachers who always encourage particular elements of process writing, such as planning and defining purpose and audience, were found to be generally better writers than students of teachers who reportedly never encourage theses activities. Similarly, average writing ability is higher among students whose teachers emphasize more than one process writing strategy”(pg.5).