Week 10- Best Practices by Steve Graham, Charles A.

MacArthur, and Michael Hebert, chapters 14-15

Chapter 14 is about assessing writing. It talks about the assessment for learning

(formative assessment) and its 5 activities- clarifying criteria for success, eliciting samples of

students’ performance, providing students with feedback that moves them forward, engaging

students as peer supports, and helping students take ownership of their learning. It then goes

deeper into each of these activities, including information on how to utilize this or things to use

when implementing these strategies. It includes things such as using rubrics to clarify criteria,

use questioning during teacher-led discussion to elicit samples of performance, vary the type of

feedback you give to move students forward, highlight the qualities of effective feedback to

engage students as peer supports, and provide students with opportunities to self evaluate to help

students take ownership of their learning. Chapter 15 is about instruction for students with

special needs. It talks about common writing challenges for these students, sentence-level and

composition skills of SWD (students with disabilities), how to motivate these students,

evidence-based writing instruction (providing explicit instruction, using visual cues, using

cover-and-copy exercises, including alphabet exercises, and integrating handwriting practices

with extended text), the CCSS, and other small things like spelling.

Chapter 14 was super informative for me. I think it is the chapter I learned the most from

this semester. I really appreciated the rubric example because it not only gave us the categories

(the acronym C-SPACE) but it showed what work would look like at a 3, 2, and 1. I have seen

examples of what to put in rubrics but have not really seen one that was full out like this one. A

rubric is definitely something I will use for my students, however I think rubrics for writing are

kind of hard because how can you grade writing? I would just use a rubric for grammar,

conventions, or for an example like in the book. Another thing I liked from chapter 14 was in the
section about providing teacher feedback. It said that praise is often seen as less effective, but

because writing is social it likely will have a positive impact on students. This was super

awesome to read! I have heard a lot about the dangers of too much praise and building internal

motivation versus external motivation, but as a kid I really loved to get praise and would

sometimes question myself or feel bad about things without general praise or reassurance from

teachers. It is really validated to hear that it actually is effective and I will definitely provide my

students with praise in their writing. I am a nanny and tutor for twin boys. One has severe autism

and the other one has ADHD. Because of this, chapter 15 was not that informatie for me because

I have done extensive research on this topic! My sister is also an occupational therapist in an

elementary school and I learn a lot from her. However, one thing I will take away was the

information provided in the section about motivation. I found it really interesting that SWD are

often overconfident in their writing abilities, leading them to dedicate less time, effort, and

energy towards the practice. I would not directly use this in my class, but it is definitely

something I will keep in mind when teaching both the boys I nanny and any future SWD. I think

this knowledge provides a lot of insight to what they might be thinking and would allow me to

choose a best practice to work with.

Overall, these two chapters had lots of information and taught me a lot about teaching

itself. These are chapters that I will probably reference as a teacher. I loved the section on

feedback for students in chapter 14 as well as the section on motivation in chapter 15.

Additionally, I loved the insight provided in chapter 14 on helping students take ownership of

their learning. I really enjoyed reading these!

 Works Cited

Graham, Steve, et al. “Chapters 14 and 15.” Best Practices in Writing Instruction, Guilford Press,

New York, 2019. Kindle Edition.