FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

Each student writes one or more paragraphs using a variety of cohesive devices, including transitions, repetition and parallelism, and self-evaluates that paragraph using a scoring guide. The student also describes the organizational pattern he or she used and explains why this pattern was effective for the assigned task.

Formative Assessment Part A. Students write a paragraph (or more) to address a provided prompt (chosen/written by the teacher) using parallel structure and a variety of cohesive devices, including transitions, repetition, and parallelism. Each student then self-evaluates his/her writing using the scoring guide provided.

Formative Assessment Part B. Each student also explains the organizational pattern he or she chose to use and explains why that was effective for the assigned task.

The teacher will need to provide two different nonfiction passages, one well organized and one poorly organized. The well-organized passage should include a variety of cohesive devices, including transitions, repetition and parallelism.

The teacher will likely need to provide examples of passages, preferably nonfiction, that use repetition (poems by Edgar Allan Poe, though considered fiction, are a good example) and passages that use parallelism (political speeches such as President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address are good examples).

Students will need copies of the Writing with Parallelism worksheet, as well as the writing prompt and the scoring guide for the formative assessment activity.