Writing Assessments

Assessments are done to find out more about a student. Teachers use assessments in many ways to guide their instruction. Unfortunately, challenges face teachers teaching those who are deaf and hard of hearing. These challenges are due to assessments not being geared towards these students. There are many types of informal and formal tests out there but little that give teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing the means to build instruction.

Teachers are always looking for assessments that work for a mass majority of their classrooms population. Here are a few that I have found that show hope in improving the instruction of a classroom and giving a writing sample meaning.

CBM Writing Assessment

I find this assessment to be very user friendly and effective for any classroom. It does not take much time to implement the assessment and can be completed under 5 minutes. When trying to get writing samples from students there is not always time to get a whole narrative but with the CBM writing assessment a teacher can take a few minutes to see if the students have mastered the task and are showing improvement. This assessment can be graded in a few ways, from word counts, letter counts, to grammatical and sentence structure. I would implement this in my classroom for the purpose of collecting a writing sample from student with little time wasted. This assessment can be implemented daily and used to document the gradual changes from students who are deaf or hard of hearing. 

6 + 1 Trait 

When taking a closer look at the 6 + 1 Trait Writing Model of Instruction and Assessment it is shown to be aliened to the Common Core State Standards. For a teacher this assessment would be helpful to evaluate students with confidence that it will be linked to their curriculum. The 7th trait includes Presentation, giving the students the opportunity to construct appropriate language thorough the air. 

Writing Portfolio

When assessing a student it is not always going to be through a paper and pen assessment but could be based off performance. With a writing portfolio a student has the opportunity to showcase their writing and best papers for the teacher to see. It is a great way for a teacher to see what the student is producing from the begging of the year to the very end. Teachers can evaluate samples how ever they wish. For example a teacher can use the Mean Sentence Length (MSL) to evaluate written samples. The MSL measure the men number of words used per sentences. Teachers can also develop checklist or detailed rubrics looking for specific components.

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It is a common goal to discover new ways to assess students who are deaf and hard of hearing. For the many standardized test that are required by the state to be administered, how are accommodations being met? And how are the accommodations being done ethically with out impacting the validity of the test? The huge advantage that faces many of these students leads me to think that assessments are in high demand and the more success the popular assessments have the more aid in written language teachers will receive.