Sherry LAE 5932

SWAP Student Writing Analysis Project

Big Question: What does it mean to participate?
Apply concepts from research to student writing samples in order to evaluate teaching and learning
Purpose:
As teachers, we respond to and evaluate students performances on a
daily basis. How can we make clear comments that both support and
challenge students? How can we evaluate in ways that both maintain
standards and acknowledge individual achievement/differences? How
can we use assessment to inform subsequent instruction?

Process
For this assignment, you will collect and analyze student writing from your classroom (or someone elses),
using course resources and research, in order to practice/evaluate teacher response to student writing.

1. Collect student writing from your classroom

At some point during this assignment, you will collect a class set of student writing; this writing should also
include teacher feedback. You should plan to scan this class set of student writing and redact or black out
the names and other identifying info from each piece.

2. Explore the SWAP website

During the second half of our course, you will explore an online
archive of student writing, teacher feedback, and teacher interview
commentary. Like an online library, this resource lets you learn
(without leaving your computer) about how other teachers respond to
different aspects of student writing. Each week, you will follow another path (a set of links and questions
that guide you through the database), posting to the discussion forums on each page. Then, you will use
your discussion-forum posts to write reading responses about these paths.

3. Write a reflective essay (approach to teaching writing, unit overview, lesson sequence)
Use what you learned (and posted) while following SWAP database paths to
Outline a coherent approach for using the strategies we addressed to teach secondary writing across
genres and academic disciplines
Design an overview for an interdisciplinary unit plan focused on multi-genre research writing
Develop a lesson sequence (at least three consecutive lessons) to be used during the teaching of this
unit
4. Apply course readings or your own research to interpreting the student writing samples/feedback
Use what you learned from the previous steps or from other sources to annotate, analyze, and interpret at
least three pieces of the student writing you initially collected; include these with/in your write-up.
Please also include and interpret:
Contextual information about the implementation of the assignment; include with your analysis any
supporting materials (assignment sheets, handouts, drafts) that explain why/how you responded this
way to these three students.
Annotations about the student writing and your feedback. You may wish to use one of the annotation
tools we have already discussed (e.g, MS Word comments, Adobe pdf sticky notes, Diigo comments).
Your annotations should apply course reading/research concepts to interpretation of your writing
instructional practices.

Sherry LAE 5932

Explanation of why you have selected to focus on these three student writing samples, why/how you
designed and implemented this assignment and responded to student writers, as well as what (if any)
revisions you would make to your writing instructional practices based on your analysis.

Checklist

Approach to teaching writing across genres/disciplines

Unit overview
Lesson sequence
Analysis of responses to at least three student writing samples

Assessment

Criteria/Grade A
Process
All parts completed
Approach to
teaching

Outlines a thorough,
coherent approach to
teaching writing across
genres/academic
disciplines

B
Most parts
completed
Outlines a coherent
approach to teaching
writing across
genres/academic
disciplines

C
Some parts
completed
Outlines an approach
to teaching writing
across
genres/academic
disciplines

D/E
Missing parts

Does not outline an

approach to
teaching writing
across
genres/academic
disciplines
Unit Overview Designs an
Designs an
Designs an
Interdisciplinary
interdisciplinary unit
interdisciplinary unit interdisciplinary unit unit overview does
overview that
overview that applies overview that
not apply course
thoroughly applies
course strategies to applies course
strategies or does
course strategies to
clearly scaffold
strategies to scaffold not scaffold student
clearly scaffold student student production
student production
production of multiproduction of multiof multi-genre
of multi-genre
genre research
genre research projects research projects
research projects
projects
Lesson
Composes a lesson
Composes a lesson
Composes a lesson
Lesson sequence
Sequence
sequence that
sequence that
sequence that
does not apply
thoroughly applies
applies course
applies course
course strategies to
course strategies to
strategies to clearly strategies to scaffold or does not scaffold
clearly scaffold student scaffold student
student production
student production
production of multiproduction of multi- of multi-genre
of multi-genre
genre research projects genre research
research projects
research projects
projects
Analysis of
Student writing analysis Student writing
Student writing
Student writing
Student
thoroughly and clearly analysis and clearly
analysis explains
analysis missing
Writing
explains context for
explains context for context for student
explanation of
Samples
student writing,
student writing,
writing, selection of context for student
selection of samples,
selection of samples, samples, application writing, selection of
application of course
application of course of course concepts
samples, application
concepts to analysis of concepts to analysis to analysis of teacher of course concepts
teacher feedback, and of teacher feedback, feedback, and plans to analysis of
plans for future writing and plans for future for future writing
teacher feedback,
teaching
writing teaching
teaching
or plans for future
writing teaching