Updated Grids to Assess Writing

Grids to Assist the Assessment of Writing

Many schools have found the West Sussex Continuum for Writing useful but now feel it has been overtaken by national developments in the assessment of writing, in particular the use of Assessment Focuses (AFs).

The English team has been working with teachers to provide two new grids to assist the assessment of writing. Each provides descriptors for each Assessment Focus.

An introduction to the grids

The first grid is organised into whole level descriptions (levels 1 to 6) divided into the seven AFs. It is based on the grid devised by QCA and currently being used in the Key Stage 3 Assessing Pupil Progress Project (which West Sussex has been piloting). We have not changed the overall structure of the grid: there is clearly an advantage in using similar grids in both primary and secondary phases. We have edited the wording of many descriptors (for example, to try to make those about the earlier levels more about what children can do rather than what they can’t).

You will see that QCA has re-ordered the AFs so that, for example, AF5 appears in the first column (reflecting QCA’s recommendation that sentence structure is a good place to begin when assessing writing). However, given the electronic format, you may want to put the AFs in the order that you find most useful. (It is worth discussing as a staff which AFs individual teachers look for first.) You may also want to re-arrange the levels so that they read downwards from level 1 rather than from level 6. (Although level 6 is not reported in the national tests, the development group thought it was helpful to include these descriptors, and indeed brought writing from Year 6 children that was awarded this level.)

The second grid is organised into sub-levels (level 2C to level 4A) with additional descriptors for whole Level 5. It also includes handwriting. The AFs have been grouped differently in this grid, and, again, you may prefer to rearrange these, or change the formatting to make it more personally helpful. The descriptors are drawn from the mark schemes in the national and optional tests, so that they were originally a ‘cut and paste’ exercise and then edited to make the progression more secure.

Notes on the development of the grids

Both grids have arisen from suggestions and requests from teachers but have different origins.

The first grid was developed as a mark scheme in the pilot of an alternative assessment of writing in years 5 and 6. We would especially like to thank the teachers who have been involved in the pilot over the past two years, and who made many helpful comments about the grid both before and after using it in school-based assessment and group moderation. They were insistent that the mark scheme should be simpler than that used in the tests, and also decided that it should be just one general scheme rather than adapted to different writing tasks.

The second grid originated in joint work between the subject leader at Central Junior School (Gillian Budge) and the school’s consultant Jane King, and was then taken forward by the English team as they tried it out in other schools. Again, special thanks to Gillian and her colleagues.

The English team decided to make both grids available to schools, believing that teachers would have different preferences and that perhaps the grids would serve different assessment purposes. We feel there is more work to be done, but that it is now best to let these grids go and see what schools make of them. Schools are strongly advised not to view these grids as ‘perfect’. It is very difficult to be sure about progression in writing (especially when it comes to wording descriptions across sub-levels), and then, of course, just as difficult to capture this in words that all will understand and interpret in the same way. But we won’t get any further until teachers have tried out the grids in schools using their own pupils’ writing and matched them against the reality of children’s work.

There are important aspects of writing not captured in these grids. To some extent they are described in the NLS Target Statements for Writing in the section ‘Process’, and are the equivalent of the section called ‘Seeing Themselves as Readers’ in the West Sussex Reading Continuum. It’s the ‘before and after’ elements of writing: researching, planning, drafting, revising, proof-reading and all those collaborative skills in classrooms where writing is shared and helpfully discussed. We think it would be useful to add a supplement to the grids which assists teachers in assessing and discussing with children in all age groups these aspects of writing.

All the English team have been involved in the development of the grids and will be able to give further advice about their use. Above all, the team want to hear from teachers who use the grids and over the year continue to improve them in the light of recommendations and practical experience.