| ...is a Buddy initiative sponsored by the Corporation for Educational Technology in cooperation with the Indiana Department of Education.
Buddy’s vision for this free resource is to become “the place to go” for writing information in the K-12 environment for teachers, students and parents. First launched in mid-2005, The Writing Site features:
- An interactive tutorial for holistic assessment of student writing using the Indiana ISTEP+ writing rubrics.
- Hundreds of downloadable and printable student writing samples for use as exemplars in writing instruction
- Summaries of popular writing models and assessment strategies with links to their official sites
- Articles covering writing instruction and assessment issues across all content areas and grade levels.
- Technology tips and tools to enhance the writing experience for students and teachers
- Writing activity ideas, including prompts for various writing genres
- Links to writing resources across the world-wide web
Scoring Practice: At the core of this site is an interactive tutorial for holistic assessment of student writing using the Indiana ISTEP+ rubrics. The user chooses a grade level in a particular genre, then is presented with an actual student sample for their online review and assessment. Immediately after the user’s scores are submitted, a comparison with an “expert’s” scores, complete with a written rationale using the ISTEP+ writing applications and language conventions rubrics is displayed.
The main tutorial offers practice for scoring prompted “first draft” writing samples at grades 2 through 12 with six practice papers for each available genre. Help screens, rubrics, and comparison papers are associated with each set of papers.
A separate tutorial will address writing assessment at kindergarten and first grade levels using a developmental scale with actual student writing samples.
Exemplars: Use of student exemplars has long been recognized as an essential writing instructional practice. Users can find exemplars by grade level and genre at The Writing Site. Listed examples are annotated based upon strengths and weaknesses of basic writing traits. Papers may be viewed online or downloaded as PDF files for reproduction and classroom use.
Hundreds of papers are available, including samples that show strengths or weaknesses in all aspects of writing as well as those that are particularly strong in certain writing traits but are weak in others. Papers are continually reviewed and added to the system. Each exemplar includes the prompt for which the paper was written.
The Write Connections, a companion quarterly publication to The Writing Site,  is available free as an emailed PDF attachment for subscribers. The four-page newsletter features original articles and columns about writing instruction and assessment issues as well as regular features such “Frakshurd Frases,” “Literature Links,” “Ready, Set, Write,” and “Cartoons with Class.” Three versions of the newsletter are available, customized respectively for primary, intermediate and secondary teacher audiences. Subscribe online at the Write Connections subscription form.
Contributors to the content of both The Writing Site and Write Connections include hundreds of teachers from dozens of K-12 schools from across the state of Indiana as well as university faculty and professional consultants in the field of writing instruction and assessment. Writing samples as well as their examples of unique spelling and phraseology have been generously shared by thousands of Indiana students for our online and print features.
For more information about this or other Buddy initiatives, contact Nancy A. S.
Miller,
Buddy Project Manager, (Phone: 765.296.9257) or by writing to:
The Buddy Project
c/o INTEConsulting, Inc.
4035 Dayton Road
Lafayette, IN 47905
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