Hello All,
It's a new day for teachers of writing on the Vineyard!!!!!
We had a great meeting with lots of valuable discussion today. In attendance were: Laurie Halt, Sally Mitchell, Donna Hopson, Jane Taylor, Julie Hitchings and myself. We plan on moving forward as a district with the attached plan. Please take the time to read it and let us know or your building representative know if you have questions. We hope you will find the new process to be an improvement; we spent a good deal of time looking at the writing prompt in the past, what current educational research says and what the various options were.
Best,
Moira & Donna
co-chairs of 6-8 writing committee

Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools
Grades 6-8 Writing Assessment
February 2008

Goal: To collaboratively improve writing instruction on Martha’s Vineyard
Next meeting: Language arts and reading specialists are expected to attend.
E.L.L. teachers and SPED teachers are invited to attend.
Location: Edgartown School, health room 11:45-2:40

Over the next two months, please do two things:
Collect:1. 1 ‘best’ writing sample from every student writer in grades 6-8
2.  Create a general list of your writing assignments and from it, pick one ‘favorite writing assignment’ to share with everyone

Writing sample requirements:
~Two pages or less
~Clean copy; no teacher edits/ other marks
~No names: please write the common school abbreviation, grade, student writer # (make it up and keep a key for yourself) and the year. For example, if I taught 8th grade in Edgartown, and this was Jackie’s paper (she’s number 15), my papers would read EDG.8.15.2008                  Note: School abbreviations: WTIS, TIS, OB, EDG
~prose only (any other genre than poetry!)
~Enclose a cover sheet. On cover sheet for each writing sample, have each writer include a few sentences answering the following questions:
1. what the assignment was or what he/she was intending to        
achieve in this piece
2.why he/she selected it and
3. what his/her goals were in the sample
~Turn samples in to your building representative by the morning of April 17th.
Building Representatives
Moira Silva- EDG
Donna Hopson- OB
Jane Taylor- TIS
Julie Hitchings- WTIS

On April 29th, we will meet for a brown bag lunch at 11:45. Our meeting will begin promptly at 12:15 and end at 2:40. We will each bring a list of all writing assignments and a handout describing our favorite (one you would give to the class—this is NOT extra work!). After we each present this information, we will consider the student samples which were produced. The types of discussion questions we will focus on are: What surprised you about your classes’ samples? What disturbed you about your classes’ samples? What are conclusions you can draw from looking at your classes’ best work? Are there strengths and recommendations you’d like to share?

After we discuss how we approach teaching writing, what our student writer’s strengths and weaknesses are and some overall insights, we will consider how this can translate into a district writing assessment for next year. At that point, we will hopefully be able to build some anchor papers and possibly hire a consultant to help us build an assessment which is consistent, effective and helpful.