Tompkins Ch.4 Assessing Children's Writing

The goal of writing assessment is "To help children become better writers. Teachers regularly use informal monitoring procedures to keep track of children's progress" (Tompkins, 2008, p.74). There are observing, conferencing, collecting writing samples, and keeping records in informal monitoring process. Melissa (2009) indicates that "Authentic assessment tools will provide the teacher of English language learners with insights about their students' writing development and showcase their writing progress over time". That's why the development of effective evaluation is very important.

  

According to Soo Hyun Kim, teachers can help children to be better writers(sophisticated writers) to measure how well children are using the writing process by using process writing assessment. Observing, conferencing, collecting, and scoring can be the assessment tools. While reading this, I realized that the higher the quality of assessment are, the higher the reliability of assessment is. And I've decided to put my effort more into the creative and credible assessment method.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Melissa, S. (2009). Effective writing assessment and instruction for young English language learners. Early Childhood Education Journal, 37, 52-62.

Tompkins Ch.3 Writing Strategies and Skills

Tompkins (2008, p.52) defines that "Strategies are probelm-solving behaviors that wirters use thoughtully and consicously. In constrast skills are information-processing techiniques that writers use automatically and unconsciouly". To provide direct instruction about strategies and skills, it is a good teaching method for students to make minilessons about them. As Marleen (2007) states "The two most well-defined writing strategies that have been identified, are those of a planning strategy and a revising strategy".

According to Ja Eun Kim, there are two kinds of writers: capable writers and struggling writers. The capable writers are able to write in a required genre and revise and evaluate their writings by themselves. The struggling writers, however, have a hard time to produce their writings in different genres freely. In order to help them, teachers need to teach them the writing strategies and skills equally. However, I think there might be a little different writing approaches to teach each of them. 

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Marleen, K. (2007). The effects of adapting a writing course to students' writing strategies. British journal of educational psychology, 77, 565-578.

Tompkins Ch.2 Writing Workshop

"There are writing, sharing, minilessons and reading aloud to children in the components of writing workshop". Tompkins (2008, p.30) stated that the purpose of writing workshop is to provide children with opportunities to use the writing process to create books and other compositions. Writing Workshop is an interactive approach to teaching writing as students learn and practice the importance of rehearsal, drafting/revising, and editing their pieces of writing (Calkins, 1986; Graves, 1983). According to Calkins (1986), "In this writing workshop approach, children write about what is vital and real for them".

Ja Eun Kim says that students need to be able to write on a self-selected topic and apply the writing process independently. Therefore, one of the best ways of helping them work by themselves is writing workshop. I believe it's true. The main goal of writing workshop is to stimulate the children's creativity.

Tompkins, G. E. (2008). Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Calkins, L. M. (1986). The art of teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Teachers and children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Assignment #3: Graphic Organizers

Visualizing Strategy(Juhyun Lee)

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My teaching experiences and target teaching levels

In 2003, I passed the National teacher certification examination and became an English teacher and have been teaching English until now. Therefore, this year is the 8th year of my teaching experience.
Since I have a certification to teach English to middle and high school students, they are my target teaching levels.