National Adult Language, Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Conference

Getting it Write

Getting it Write: A beginners’ guide to writing assessment items for writing

Presenter: Martina Bovell, Senior Research Fellow, ACER

Thursday, 9 May 2013

Workshop 2, 9.30 – 12:30pm

This workshop will provide an overview of the process of constructing items that assess writing skills, including the theoretical principles and reasons for choices made at every stage. Some of the processes that typically go into developing strong and valid assessment writing topics will be explored in the workshop. Throughout this workshop the discussion will be linked to specific topics from a variety of sources.

Participants will consider features and qualities of a writing assessment in relation to the core skill of Writing, as described in the Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF). They will examine how writing topics and their accompanying marking criteria are related to each other and to the ACSF, and they will contribute to the process of review and critique of both topics and criteria. There will be opportunity to consider how summative and formative information about learner performance is elicited from assessment results, and discuss ways in which this information can be used in the classroom to improve learner skills.

The last part of the workshop will give participants time to write topics that are relevant to their own teaching areas. There will be the opportunity to receive feedback on these, using the principles and practices discussed in the workshop. Participants may wish to bring along their own writing assessments and marking criteria to discuss in this part of the workshop, in which case an electronic copy should be provided to the conference organiser.

The workshop is targeted to curriculum managers and classroom teachers.

Back to the pre-conference workshop program

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