Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Recommendation 3

Use assessments of student writing to inform 

instruction and feedback.

Monitoring student progress throughout the 

writing process provides useful information 

for planning instruction and providing 

timely feedback to students. By regularly 

assessing student performance—not just 

students’ final written products—teachers 

learn about student progress on key 

learning objectives and can tailor their 

writing instruction accordingly. Struggling 

students and students with disabilities can 

benefit from additional and differentiated 

instruction on skills that have been taught, 

while students who have already mastered 

a skill can advance to a new one.

The formative assessment cycle is an 

iterative process in which teachers repeatedly 

assess students’ skills and adapt instruction 

accordingly until the targeted learning goals 

are achieved (see Figure 3.1).

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 The process 

begins with the teacher identifying the