Simple ways to assess the writing skills of students with learning disabilities

Summary

Simple curriculum-based assessments can be used to assess the writing process and products of students with learning disabilities, as well as take into account purpose. The assessments recommended in this article also adequately fulfill the purposes of assessment as discussed at the beginning of the article: identifying strengths and weaknesses, planning instruction to fit diagnosed needs, evaluating instructional activities, giving feedback, monitoring performance, and reporting progress. A teacher might use these methods at the beginning of the year to do a quick sizing-up of student instructional needs. The process checklist in Figure 1 gives the teacher important diagnostic information about the strategies a student does or does not use when writing.
A quick assessment of product variables from the first two or three writing assignments also gives the teacher important diagnostic information about skill strengths and weaknesses. The teacher then should use the initial assessment to identify instructional targets. Some students, for example, may do pretty well at planning their composition, but do little in the way of effective editing. Other students may have creative ideas, but need considerable work on conventions. Some students may do pretty well with writing stories, but need to learn how to write factual paragraphs.
All classroom-based assessment should involve the student. Self-assessment helps students take ownership for their own writing and helps them internalize the strategies they are learning. The teacher's feedback should be given judiciously: generous in the encouragement of ideas and improved skills, but cautious in correction. Corrective feedback should only focus on those few skill targets that have been addressed in instruction.
Simple classroom-based methods also can be used to monitor student performance and report progress. Figure 6 is an assessment summary sheet that could be used to give a profile of a student's skills across a variety of writing purposes and genres. In an assessment portfolio the summary sheet would be accompanied by representative samples of a student's writing with both the student's and teacher's evaluations. After an initial assessment of student strengths and weakness across fluency, content, conventions, syntax, and vocabulary, the teacher would not necessarily need to monitor all the product factors, just those that focus on the student's greatest challenges and priority instructional objectives.