Writing Moderation

We had a staff meeting around writing moderation today. We were looking at one piece of writing and deciding how to grade each area before giving our feedback in order to see how similar/different our marks were.
  It is good to hear the opinion of others who think different from you as it challenges your own thinking.

Do others offer a perspective that you didn't think of before which could possibly lead you to change your answer?

OR

 Do you have enough evidence to support your stance which others find difficult to challenge?

One of the challenges I notice sometimes is understanding what it means when the e-asTTle rubric says: 'May attempt to use words with two syllables' or 'paragraphs may have minimal development e.g. one sentence'.

Words such as 'may' 'some' 'a few'  'minimal' etc. also leave room for interpretation which is where some of our dialogue came from.  Does a few mean at least 3 times? Does 'may' mean that it doesn't necessarily need to be in the text?  When you are looking for precise detail,  how many precise details are sufficient to feel confident enough to move that student to an R5 rather than a R4?  If you know your student, do you use your OTJ's  to influence the mark you give them? or do you only go on what they presented in that particular piece of writing?


Why is writing moderation important?

• Brings together collective wisdom, resulting in greater consistency of judgment, and focused teaching.

• Provides greater confidence in teacher judgments, and assurance that judgments are consistent with those of other professionals.

• Leads to shared expectations of learning, and understandings of standards and progression of learning.

• Develops deeper understandings about content and progressions of learning.

• Improves quality of assessment.

• Aligns expectations and judgments with standards or progressions, and hence improved teaching and learning.

• Assures parents and others that interpretations of students' achievements are in line with those of other professionals

One of the areas that I sometimes find challenging is staying focused and not letting other perceived errors influence my thinking. For example, if you are marking a student on sentence structure, it can be challenging to not let the lack (or incorrect use) of punctuation affect your ability to grade only  their sentence structure.

It is important to understand what each area means i.e. what are you specifically looking for within the text and within each area what criteria qualifies an R1- R6? 

The dialogue that took place during our staff meeting helped me to think critically and learn when to try stay firm in my position and when to take on others perspectives that my differ from my own which can lead me to change my original decision. This wasn't a time to take things personally if others thought differently than me. This exercise helped me to look at the evidence and use that to guide my decision. This is helping me to reflect as a learner, and it is shaping my future professional needs as a teacher.

I am still learning...