Assessing Writers [Paperback]

Carl Anderson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0325005818 | ISBN-13: 978-0325005812 | Publication Date: June 21, 2005

When it comes to writing assessment, there's no better judge of what your students know and are able to do than you. And when it comes to advice on best practices for assessment, there's no better source than Carl Anderson's Assessing Writers. Like he did in the popular and highly acclaimed How's It Going?, Anderson offers smart, ready-to-use ideas for assessment. Assessing Writers offers practical methods for gathering information about every writer in your classroom and shows you how to create writing lessons that address the needs of individual students as well as the whole class.

Anderson's straightforward approach helps you imagine an ongoing assessment program that takes you from meeting new students to designing curriculum. In Assessing Writers you'll find out:

• what you need to know about students to assess them as writers
• how to uncover and make sense of this information
• how to make an individualized plan for each student
• how to use these plans when you confer
• how to structure units of study to meet classroom-wide needs.

Let Carl Anderson be your guide as you place assessment at the center of writing instruction. With a wealth of smart suggestions, useful charts, reproducible rubrics, and activities for professional reflection, Assessing Writers gives you powerful tools that make assessment simple and effective.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carl Anderson is one of the nation's leading experts on teaching writing to students in grades K-12. Carl was first an elementary and then a middle school teacher. He taught students of diverse backgrounds in city, rural, and suburban schools in New York City, Bardstown, Kentucky, and Northbrook, Illinois. In 1994, Carl joined the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, which was founded and is directed by Lucy Calkins. As a Project staff developer for eight years, Carl worked side-by-side with teachers in elementary and middle school classrooms in New York City and in its surrounding suburbs, showing them how to establish writing workshops for their students. While at the Project, Carl began an intensive study of writing conferences. This study led to his first book, How's It Going? A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers (2000), and later to his second book, Assessing Writers (2004) and his series Strategic Writing Conferences: Smart Conversations that Move Young Writers Forward Grades 3-6 (2009). Today, Carl works as a consultant in schools across the United States. He continues to spend most of his days in classrooms with teachers and students, where he concentrates on helping teachers learn to have effective writing conferences that change students' lives as writers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Heinemann (June 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0325005818
• ISBN-13: 978-0325005812
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great resource!, December 24, 2010

By 

JessicaK - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Assessing Writers (Paperback)

Anderson's book offers clear, practical suggestions for how to assess and monitor progress in the writing workshop. It helps you figure out how to pick an assessment focus and how to link your data with instruction. I love the tips for picking assessment and conference focuses, with different suggestions based on what you see your writers struggling with. Anderson also provides a variety of record-keeping and conference forms. This book is a must-have for any writing teacher!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Writing Workshop MUST HAVE -- especially in addition to Calkins kits, May 6, 2008

By 

Rebecca Baker "third grader at heart" (Grand Haven, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Assessing Writers (Paperback)

I wouldn't be as good a teacher of writing without this book. No kidding. It provides the daily nitty-gritty practical solutions to common writing workshop problems, and has great ideas for conferring, unit planning, troubleshooting, and more. This is for the every day teacher and college folk alike.

Some of the blacklines from this book are ESSENTIAL to my organization of workshop. I can't imagine trying to do it without his advice and guidance. His book was the "Miracle Grow" to my Calkins kit experience. The piece I needed to REALLY pull it off and feel good about it. Heworked in the project with Ms. Calkins, so his ideas line right up with the ideas I already have in motion. I don't work for anybody, but I heartfully encourage you to help yourself by getting this one (and I love his How's It Going? too...)

2.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to read, April 28, 2011

By 

Cindy Lou Who (Indiana) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Assessing Writers (Paperback)

For an author who spends his life assessing writers, his skills don't apply to himself. I found the wording contrived and awkward. The ideas are good, it's just not presented very well.