ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION Regina Public Schools

News:  In the 2009-2010 school year we will no longer be conducting writing benchmarks at the system level.  Instead, Grade 8 and 10 students will be assessed in writing using a value-added assessment model. 

In Regina Public Schools, Grade 4, 8 and 10 students participate in Writing Benchmarks. Students are given a prompt and write either a narrative or expository piece of writing. The papers are collected and scored by teachers. A 6 point holistic rubric and anchor papers (actual examples of student writing) are used to score the papers. Each student's work is returned to the school marked with the score. Teachers can then work with students on improving their writing.

Twenty teachers are required to score the writing each year. It is consistently rated by teachers to be one of the best forms of Professional Development. A request for scorers is sent several weeks before each assessment. Also, four teachers are required to be range finders. Their job is to find the anchor papers and training papers to be used at the scoring session.

The latest version of our system writing anchor papers can be downloaded by going to the exemplars webpage . 

Sask. Learning piloted a new AFL Writing Assessment in the 2007/2008 school year. Grades 5, 8 and 11 were involved in this. An online pre-assessement package for teachers is available for teachers to use to prepare students for the assessment or to use at anytime to teach writing.

We will not be doing our own writing benchmark assessment at the Grade 10 level in the 2008/2009 school year due to the provincial AFL assessment in reading done at about the same time..

If you are interested in some ideas for improving student scores on writing benchmarks, download the file "Benchmark Handbook" below or go to this link . If you have an idea or two that has worked well for you in your classroom, please share it with other teachers by posting your idea in our message board forum!

Take a look at the new Writing Benchmarks Help Page for ideas on how to improve student writing on benchmark assessments. It contains links to sample prompts, exemplars, rubrics and teacher and student directions for administering writing benchmarks.