Scaffolded Writing Assessments

Assessments shouldn’t have to take hours to create. That’s something that is hard for me to accept and learn because I love the creative process so much. But good assessments let the students do the work and demonstrate their skills.

A recently went back to using scaffolded writing assessments with my Spanish 3 class. There was just such a range of abilities and I didn’t want to limit them or overwhelm them. I needed a good assessment that could cover A LOT of area.

The beauty of a scaffolded assessment is that the students have a little bit of choice and freedom and also it really allows them to understand how strong their skills are.

Scaffolded Assessments like these could be used for any unit. Just change the specific vocabulary in the first column.

In addition to just going straight to the assessment, I used a couple of digital review activities to help my students prepare for this End of the Semester exam.

I think that all of these resources can be easily manipulated and edited to help any language teacher. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Dot Game (Digital Version): I always loved the Dot Game for a quick vocabulary partner review. I also liked having the students create sentences using the vocabulary. With dual F2F and virtual students, that was tough so I had to recreate a way to get this activity virtual. I created a Dot Game Template that had multiple slides inside ONE GOOGLE slide. Students play against each other and draw lines connecting dots. Once one partner has closed in a box, the OTHER partner has to use that word in a sentence. I monitor and protect all the slides at once so I can see progression as it’s happening. And virtual students were able to play live against a F2F student without missing a beat.

Preparation Slides: Have students analyze different types of phrases and sort them. I like that there is no answer key—students can use their own ideas to differentiate between the phrases. In this activity the discussion that is generated and the examples to learn from are worth more than the finished product. I use this as the prep/intro to the writing assessment.

Summative Writing Assessment: I liked showing the students different level of proficiency. I also liked letting them choose which word they wanted to use for each box.

This is an easy assessment for teachers to edit and personalize. Just fill the boxes with words associated with your content. I recommend choosing very basic vocabulary for your first few rows and go up to some advanced words and phrases for the final few rows.

I think a good summative assessment is like a 10 foot ruler—not everyone is expected to get 100% or to be 10 feet tall. But you need to use a tall enough ruler just to check. If you are constantly measuring kids with a 6 foot ruler, how do you know they aren’t taller than 6 feet versus exactly 6 feet tale?

If you found these resources helpful, I’d gladly accept a coffee or a Tweet of thanks. I hope to continue to bring you ideas to share that can hopefully help others.