10 Writing Opportunities to “Teach to the Test”

Abstract

Within the current political and educative context, where high‐stakes standardized assessments create a pressure‐filled experience for teachers to “teach to the test,” time spent on writing instruction that supports students in transferring their learning between classroom and assessment contexts is crucial. Teachers who must use prompts to prepare students for standardized writing assessments can utilize writing contests and/or publication opportunities available on the Internet to prepare students for the context of standardized assessments. Contest writing can motivate students to practice writing to prompts for distant audiences. Ten websites are shared of organizations that host no fee writing contests and/or publishing opportunities for students to write in various fiction and/or nonfiction persuasive, explanatory, and narrative genres. The majority of these sites also post winning contest entries and/or publish anthologies/magazines of students’ writing that can be used as mentor texts for students to analyze and emulate to improve their writing.

Using Authentic Writing Contests to Prepare Third Graders for High Stakes Standardized Assessments

“…Students used their writer's craft to detail their personal experiences and wrote more words when they wrote to contests versus standardized writing assessments. Although students' writing quality did not show significant improvement, authentic writing contests created situational interest for writing as students felt motivated to respond to the prompts, as one student shared, "Everybody's different….I write a different story than anybody else…and and assessment goals (DeFauw, 2013). Figure 2 provides 14 additional contests useful in meeting current requirements.…”

The Playwright Within: Fun, Freedom, and Agency Through Playwriting for Urban Elementary Students

“…In contrast, Hanley (2010) finds the power to transform through the arts (or agency) to be useful in understanding the artist’s work: “Students integrate mind, body, emotion, and spirit, cultural knowledge, rationality, and intuition to conceptualize, make hypotheses and choices, to try solutions, to transform the art medium, themselves, and those who view and interpret their work” (p. 197). Literacy opportunities to use imagination rather than recall and test-taking (DeFauw, 2013) keep students engaged (Gambrell, 2011; Teale & Gambrell, 2007) and motivated to transform their creativity into the language of wider communication (Kirkland, 2010).…”

Editorial

“…Por meio de estudos de recepção em boa parte dos casos, essas pesquisas avaliam, por exemplo, como as crianças, a partir de sua relação com a mídia, constroem realidade(DE LA ROCHE, 2012), ressignificam identidades ofertadas(SIMPSON, 2013;WOHLWEND, 2012), promovem usos distintos da produção audiovisual e musical(CHACÓN, MORALES, 2014;FERNÁNDEZ, 2010;PEREIRA, 2006), bem como dos desenhos animados(ROCHA, 2012;SALGADO, 2012).O segundo grupo é formado por investigações que procuram enxergar as crianças para além de sua condição de consumidoras, entendendo-as como produtoras de cultura, não apenas na sua compreensão simbólica, mas também material. Dentre as temáticas exploradas estão o uso das novas tecnologias pelas crianças para a produção de textos escritos, filmes e ficção(DEFAUW, 2013;LENTERS, WINTERS, 2013; SCHNEIDER et al, 2014;YOUNG, RASINSKI, 2013), a formulação de novas maneiras para brincadeiras conhecidas(BRENT, 2011; SIQUEIRA et al, 2012) e de novos modos de letramento (O'MARA,…”