This practical and realistic book is designed to help practitioners who wish to improve their effectiveness in assessing a large and a diverse range of students. It will help them to: clarify their role in assessment gain confidence on issues and terms and consider variations between discipline compare and extend their current range of solutions to common problems with advice from practitioners consider in more depth essays, reports and projects, plagiarism and language.

Assessment is one of the most powerful tools in teaching yet it is rarely measured in effort, time and effectiveness and it is usually done alone and against the clock. This book aims to clarify the concepts and issues.

With this updated document, IRA and NCTE reaffirm their position that the primary purpose of assessment must be to improve teaching and learning for all students. Eleven core standards are presented and explained, and a helpful glossary makes this document suitable not only for educators but for parents, policymakers, school board members, and other stakeholders. Case studies of large-scale national tests and smaller scale classroom assessments (particularly in the context of RTI, or Response to Intervention) are used to highlight how assessments in use today do or do not meet the standards.

Asao B. Inoue argues for the use of labor-based grading contracts along with compassionate practices to determine course grades as a way to do social justice work with students.

Writing is one of the central skills a student must master. Why should they be tested? How should they be tested? What tasks should be used? The answers to these questions are provided by this book, which examines the theory behind the practice of assessing a student's writing abilities.

Many English language learners (ELLs) require extra support to become successful writers. This book helps teachers understand the unique needs of ELLs and promote their achievement by adapting the effective instructional methods they already know. Engaging and accessible, the book features standards-based lesson planning ideas, examples of student work, and 15 reproducible worksheets, rubrics, and other useful materials. It describes ways to combine instruction in core skills with ample opportunities to write and revise in different genres. Invaluable guidance is provided for assessing ELLs' writing development at different grade levels and language proficiency levels. This book will be valuable for teachers in general education and ESL classrooms; literacy specialists and coaches; graduate students in literacy and ESL programs. It will also serve as a text in graduate-level courses such as Writing Instruction, Teaching English Language Learners, and Teaching English as a Second Language.

To many academics, composition still represents typewritten texts on 8.5" x 11" pages that follow rote argumentative guidelines. In Toward a Composition Made Whole, Jody Shipka views composition as an act of communication that can be expressed through any number of media and as a path to meaning-making. Her study offers an in-depth examination of multimodality via the processes, values, structures, and semiotic practices people employ every day to compose and communicate their thoughts. Shipka counters current associations that equate multimodality only with computer, digitized, or screen-mediated texts, which are often self-limiting. She stretches the boundaries of composition to include a hybridization of aural, visual, and written forms. Shipka analyzes the work of current scholars in multimodality and combines this with recent writing theory to create her own teaching framework. Among her methods, Shipka employs process-oriented reflection and a statement of goals and choices to prepare students to compose using various media in ways that spur their rhetorical and material awareness. They are encouraged to produce unusual text forms while also learning to understand the composition process as a whole. Shipka presents several case studies of students working in multimodal composition and explains the strategies, tools, and spaces they employ. She then offers methods to critically assess multimodal writing projects. Toward a Composition Made Whole challenges theorists and compositionists to further investigate communication practices and broaden the scope of writing to include all composing methods. While Shipka views writing as crucial to discourse, she challenges us to always consider the various purposes that writing serves.