Chapter 6 O'Malley Pierce

O’Malley, Pierce. Authentic Assessment For English Language Learners. Chapter 6.

Authentic assessment on writing assessment brings out two important aspects: self-assessment and peer assessment. This chapter describes nearly everything about writing, from the role of the writer to the nature of writing task and includes samples of scoring rubrics.

I found this chapter to be well worth reading. It brought on new perspectives for my own classroom and it also brought questions for me as a teacher. Writing has never really been strong area for nearly most of my students, especially boys. I wonder if there’s research out there about young boys and writing. It seems there’s always at least two or three boys who, no matter what tasks you bring out, never like to write. Some times I’d have to sit next to the student and encourage/prod and praise with ideas.

The area that I think we lack in our writing lies in self-assessment and peer assessment. As I read on I wondered to myself, again about those who don’t really like to write, how they would fair in writing a self-reflection or peer evaluation. All the ideas sound great, but in reality, some times we run into problematic areas, but at the end, the challenge lies in the teacher finding writing tasks that are interesting and fun.