Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Denver Scoring Conference

Hello All,
I’ve recently made it home to New Orleans after a four day NWP Scoring Conference in Denver. I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into, all I knew was that the hotel was really nice (the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in) and it was within walking distance of Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies. Catching live baseball and staying in a wonderful hotel on someone else’s dime were motivating factors enough for me to tell Keri that I would be up for representing the OWP.
It wasn’t all fun and games though; we did work diligently and hard. After being trained to use the scoring continuum that the national office developed (think 6+1 Writing Traits, but modified for specific evidenced based assessment), the middle school group that I was a part of scored approximately 1400 papers (there were 18 of us). Our role was that of scorers (duh) for a continued study that the Local Sites Research Initiative began four years ago (could be wrong there). I had no idea what this whole LSRI thing was, or that we were participating in any study – I just thought I was going to get taught how to score better (I was thinking quicker, more consistently) according to the NWP’s scoring rubric. Well, that is what happened, but I also learned of the reason behind it, and it really is an amazing one.
The results of this study put on by the LSRI have found that, pretty much across the board, programs developed by the NWP and implemented within writing classrooms foster better writing (now since I know the TCs from last year don’t like the word better for some reason, read the damn study yourself and then you can inform me what synonym you would use). This is an encouraging finding, especially for those currently in the SI right now wondering what you've got yourself into. *Implementation of the practices is key.
Well, after about day two I was asking myself, "what specific practices produce the significant difference?" I knew the go-to phrase for Keri and Casey last year was “research based,” much to the chagrin of Larry. I wanted to know specifically what I needed to be doing in my classroom to ensure that my students writing improved. In the previously linked article, the report Writing Next is referenced. This report describes eleven elements to improve writing achievement in grades 4-12, and includes several references to Writing Project work.
I’ll stop here, because after rereading, I realize this description has the potential to be extremely boring for those who weren’t there. I'll finished by saying that I'm encouraged by these findings, and look forward to working with future TCs to flex the OWP muscle in southwest Missouri.

T

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