It Is More Than Just the Message: Presentation Effects in Scoring Writing

People write for many reasons. Writing is used as a tool to record ideas and information, communicate with others, chronicle experiences, express one's feelings, persuade others, facilitate learning, create imagined worlds, and evaluate students' competence (Graham, 2006). In some instances, the only intended reader of a piece of writing is the author. Examples of such writing include diaries, to do lists, and lecture notes. In other instances, writing is meant to be both read and formally evaluated by others. This kind of writing can range from term papers to state and federal writing assessments to writing requirements included as part of college entrance applications

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT AND WRITING: A Meta-Analysis

To determine whether formative writing assessments that are directly tied to everyday classroom teaching and learn- ing enhance students’ writing performance, we conducted a meta-analysis of true and quasi-experiments conducted with students in grades 1 to 8. We found that feedback to students about writing from adults, peers, self, and com- puters statistically enhanced writing quality, yielding average weighted effect sizes of 0.87, 0.58, 0.62, and 0.38, respectively. We did not find, however, that teachers’ monitoring of students’ writing progress or implemen- tation of the 6 + 1 Trait Writing model meaningfully enhanced students’ writing. The findings from this meta-analysis provide support for the use of formative writing assessments that provide feedback directly to students as part of everyday teaching and learning. We argue that such assessments should be used more fre- quently by teachers, and that they should play a stronger role in the Next-Generation Assessment Systems being developed by Smarter Balanced and PARCC

Assessing the Writing Achievement of Young Struggling Writers: Application of Generalizability Theory

This study examined the number of writing samples needed to obtain a reliable estimate of young struggling writers’ capabilities. It further assessed if performance in one genre was reflective of performance in other genres for these children. Second- and third-grade students (81 boys, 56 girls), who were identified as struggling writers in need of special assistance by their teacher and scored at the 25th percentile or lower on a norm-referenced story-writing test, wrote four compositions: a story, personal narrative, opinion essay, and informative text. Applying generalizability theory (G-theory), students’ scores on three writing measures (total number of words [TNW], vocabulary diversity, and writing quality) for the four compositions were each portioned into variance due to the following sources: students, writing tasks, and the interaction between students and writing tasks. We found that 14, 8, and 11 compositions, respectively, would be needed to obtain a reliable estimate of these students’ writing capabilities in terms of TNW, vocabulary diversity, and writing quality. Furthermore, how well these students wrote in one genre provided a weak prediction of how well they wrote in other genres

Teaching writing strategies to young students struggling with writing and at-risk for behavioral disorders: Self-regulated strategy development

This is the publisher's version, also found here: http://cec.metapress.com/content/178520r317650740/?p=03aae0a2540a4a3189d1a9319f390d15&pi=8The article focuses on the use of the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) educational model, which teaches students the planning, goal setting, and self evaluation skill necessary to writing success. The article outlines the six stages of the SRSD model, including the development of background knowledge, discussion, modeling, memorization, support and independent performance. A case example is presented of students with behavioral or emotional problems working through the method to improve their writing

PinR mediates the generation of reversible population diversity in Streptococcus zooepidemicus

Opportunistic pathogens must adapt to and survive in a wide range of complex ecosystems. Streptococcus zooepidemicus is an opportunistic pathogen of horses and many other animals, including humans. The assembly of different surface architecture phenotypes from one genotype is likely to be crucial to the successful exploitation of such an opportunistic lifestyle. Construction of a series of mutants revealed that a serine recombinase, PinR, inverts 114 bp of the promoter of SZO_08560, which is bordered by GTAGACTTTA and TAAAGTCTAC inverted repeats. Inversion acts as a switch, controlling the transcription of this sortase-processed protein, which may enhance the attachment of S. zooepidemicus to equine trachea. The genome of a recently sequenced strain of S. zooepidemicus, 2329 (Sz2329), was found to contain a disruptive internal inversion of 7 kb of the FimIV pilus locus, which is bordered by TAGAAA and TTTCTA inverted repeats. This strain lacks pinR and this inversion may have become irreversible following the loss of this recombinase. Active inversion of FimIV was detected in three strains of S. zooepidemicus, 1770 (Sz1770), B260863 (SzB260863) and H050840501 (SzH050840501), all of which encoded pinR. A deletion mutant of Sz1770 that lacked pinR was no longer capable of inverting its internal region of FimIV. The data highlight redundancy in the PinR sequence recognition motif around a short TAGA consensus and suggest that PinR can reversibly influence the wider surface architecture of S. zooepidemicus, providing this organism with a bet-hedging solution to survival in fluctuating environments