Monday, April 08, 2013

The Three Facets of Writing

Catherine Gewertz:

Scoring, both human and artificial, will focus on three aspects of students' writing, Willhoft explained: 1) overall organization and style (things like how well it's written, whether the sentences are complete and coherent, and the voice and style appropriate) 2) conventions of the language, and 3) students' use of evidence (whether the essay refers appropriately to the reading materials on which it is based). Based on what is known about computer scoring, he said, Smarter Balanced officials are more confident that it will succeed with conventions, organization, and style than with use of evidence.

I'm pretty confident that they'll get the use of evidence down -- it is still a very constrained task, by design.

7 comments:

garrett said...

What kind of writing does this refer to? Sounds like NY Times article writing, or maybe a technical manual, certainly not the writing found in one of my favorite reading experiences of the last 15 years. "Morvern Caller" is a novel by the Scottish writer Alan Warner, and is partly dedicated to avant musicians Peter Brötzmann and Holger Czukay.

Tom Hoffman said...

The writing kids will need to do to meet the Common Core standards -- on the tests in particular.

Unfortunately, people are slow to pick up on the fact that there's not much room in the standards for other kinds of writing.

garrett said...

The fact that I studied music theory (Core Standards I suppose)as a teen, often gave me an outsider feeling whenever I jammed with the cool unschooled playing by emotion indie kids later in life.

Tom Hoffman said...

And you were an insider when, Gary?

garrett said...

Oh fuck, that reminds me, have to fill out that job application for grocery store stocker (no kidding).

Other than that, very happy to hear about the Scotland venture. You got it going on Tom. Could say I'm jealous of yo life. I'll leave your blog be for awhile.

Tom Hoffman said...

Don't let me scare you away Gary! You're the best bass player I've played with. I was just listening to "I'll Send You a Postcard" the other day.

garrett said...

In hindsight I think the bass was a little too high in the mix for Postcard. Marcus got preferable levels for Kafka. She So Arcane! Couldn't tell you what 'arcane' means. Antiquated? No need to respond. Cheeri-o!