PROMOTING WRITING IN THE PRIMARY GRADES AND DESIGNING WRITING ASSESSMENTS AND ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE PRIMARY GRADES

Teaching children to write is hard because writing is not so much one skill as it is a bundle of skills that includes sequencing, spelling, re reading and supporting big ideas with examples Fletcher & Portalupi (2001) pg 1. Unit 5 and 6 gave me a lot of knowledge on the fact that teaching writing can happen in several different ways such as, teaching writing whole class, as a group or one on one with the students. I learnt that in order for students to be engaged in writing a class environment should be prepared wit tools for revising their writing, materials for bookmarking, reinforcing material such as dictionaries and teacher made charts to guide their writing efforts. To further say learning about assessing students writing performance increased my knowledge on the fact that rubrics can be used instead of analyzing and marking students work anyhow based on judgement. However, rubrics are important tools that teachers use to evaluate their students finished pieces. 

Additionally, evaluating students writing is therefore beneficial to teachers because it helps the teacher to know what lessons to teach to the students or i the students are in need of a one on one with the teacher. Added to that, i also found that the primary trait scoring rubric 6+traits in writing is a more effective rubric to correct students work, due to the fact that the rubric varies with the writing purposes and audiences. As a teacher who will be teaching students to write, i will therefore teach them strategies for planning, revising their own writing pieces, strategies for summarizing reading materials, the purpose of their writing product, gathering and organizing their ideas before writing and how to increasingly write complex sentences.