Evaluating Children's Writing

Evaluating Children's Writing: A Handbook of Grading Choices for Classroom Teachers introduces and explains a wide range of specific evaluation strategies used by classroom teachers to arrive at grades and gives explicit instructions for implementing them. Samples of student writing accompany the instructions to illustrate the techniques, and an appendix of additional student writing is provided to allow readers to practice particular evaluation strategies.

More than just a catalog of grading options, however, this is a handbook with a point of view. Its purpose is to help teachers become intentional about their grading practices. Along with recipes for grading techniques, it offers a philosophy of evaluating student writing that encourages teachers to put grading into a communication context and to make choices among the many options available by determining the instructional purpose of the assignment and considering the advantages and disadvantages of particular grading strategies. Specific grading techniques are integrated with suggestions about the craft of evaluation--guidelines for instructional objectives, for student audience analysis, and for teacher self-analysis that help define communication contexts.