Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Written expression?

When we look at applying to DYS, I'll hope the Stanford-Binet report and WIAT that the school did will be enough. The whole portfolio thing is baffling to me. However, our local HG program has a full rubric with portfolio including SB + WIAT + Reading + Oral + Written.

I don't have a measuring rod to understand what "written expression two grades above" would be. Anybody know a resource that lays out what written expression looks like by grade level? I'd like to encourage/support DS7 in increasing his written complexity despite handwriting challenges.

Zen, I don't know what Davidson would consider 2 grade levels ahead, but as we've tutored our ds (who has a written expression challenge) we've used our school district and state curriculum guidelines to gauge where he is at and what he should be mastering. I found them by searching online - the school district curriculum guidelines are posted on our school district's website and the state curriculum guidelines are posted on our state's department of education website. If you can't find the specifics online, you might try asking your ds' teachers where to look or if they have a copy. The specs our district uses are very specific, so it's relatively easy to see what's expected of one grade vs another and to see what development is expected from grade to grade.

If your ds is challenged by handwriting I'd also suggest you encourage him to "write" by scribing, recording or typing - chances are you might get a much more detailed complex advanced output.

polarbear

Thanks, polarbear, I'll check for the district's standards. We picked up Dragon for him on his birthday recently. There is some frustration in training it, but so far so good.

Big thing is I don't want to set my expectations too high. Like if he writes a sentence that is a perfectly good 3rd grade sentence I don't want to be prodding him to elaborate. We need to turn in written examples within two weeks, and received stuff from his school writing folder this week.

I don't know if this would help, but re the elaboration and prodding - I wouldn't want to prod a reluctant writer either and cause them frustration - but otoh when I compare my ds' writing (very bare bones in terms of descriptions) to what my dd who loves to write writes, she is all about descriptive language and detail. One thing we've done with my dd which is prompting but doesn't necessarily result in frustration is to have him write first, then prompt him to add descriptive words, one at a time. This doesn't have to be non-fun, there are ways to make it fun. Your ds might not need it - I'm working with a kid who is severely writing challenged, but fwiw, my dd who is not severely writing challenged did add a lot of detail by the time she was in 3rd grade. Plus - I'm not sure you want to be prodding or prompting do you? If it's a sample for Davidson the goal would be to send something he's doing independently.

One thing that might help judge the level of his writing is if you've seen writing samples from other children in the same grade or higher grades. Our schools post them on the wall as part of showing off kids' work - looking at those has been another way I've tried to track ds' progress. Of course, it's the holidays and I'm guessing you're not going to be at school in time to look at something like that, but if you've made that comparison in the past think about what the other kids' writing samples looked like.

Good luck!

polarbear

Knowing DS7, if I could just get a stack of papers from third graders that are on grade level, he'd figure out the standard. However, compounded with the physical writing being behind along with spelling being nowhere near his 5th+ grade vocabulary, I don't know if he would produce that in writing. And thus to transcribing and Dragon.

Barring examples, I think we'll chat about argument structure for writing. Also, I'll see if he can wrap his head around planning. Those meta-skills seem to be the difference between oral expression and written. Based on my vast minutes of expertise I've accumulated today.

Thanks again.

Ohhh.... THANK YOU!! What a fantastic idea. I am SO doing this with my two "writtem expression deficient" math kids.

Yay (I love trying new strategies )

I like polarbears approach too. I can see it eventually being kind of a game.

I am not sure how you would effectively gauge "written exprssion two years above" but there is a huge difference between an average 3rd grader's writing versus a top 3rd grader's writing. I would venture to guess that a top 3rd grader's writing is probably superior to an average 5th grader's writing. When DS/DD started 3rd grade, the teacher on Back to School night showed the parents samples of work from the previous year's top students and they were pretty impressive - well-developed paragraphs with strong vocabulary and correct grammar/spelling. I think the teachers at your DS' school would be a good source for the standards that would be appropriate for your local HG program. After all, the writing standards also appear to vary from school district to school district.

I agree with Dottie's wise advice



I honestly haven't seen this to be true in our schools (but again, that may be a function of school district and curriculum and emphasis etc - there is a heavy emphasis on written communication in our local schools). There is a *lot* of writing development (in all areas - genre, paragraph formation and development, vocabulary, spelling etc) that happens between 3rd and 5th grade - even for an average non-gifted student.


Students in our regular (non-gifted) 5th grade classrooms are expected to be producing writing samples as described above. The samples of work I've seen from the "top" 5th graders are generally much longer in content and stand out in terms of depth of thought.

It's also a good idea when comparing writing samples to have an idea of what work process went into producing it - our elementary and middle school teachers don't typically assign a writing assignment, have the student complete it and turn it in in one fell swoop and call it good. The assignments go through a full process of brainstorming, rough draft, peer edit, final draft etc.

polarbear

eta to add a huge disclaimer - I have no idea what Davidson would expect to see in a writing sample for a portfolio - there are clearly no PG authors living under my roof!

Zen, I'm not sure I thought to suggest this earlier, but if you're looking for tips to encourage and support your ds7 with writing, and he's challenged with handwriting, I would encourage you to scribe for him, or let him audio-record his stories, or let him type them out for his first draft - you might be amazed at the difference in what he "writes"!. He can always practice grammar/spelling/etc on the piece once it's "written"... but it's tough to have handwriting as a bottleneck up front.

polarbear