Gloss: My cat likes to play with me. He lives in a house. I play with him. He is a wild cat. He plays in the house with me. I love him. He is a fat old cat. He is this big.
Notes: The student writes random letter strings.
Ideas and Content: Though the student’s writing is not easily readable because of the random letter strings, he or she clearly has ideas and is able to articulate them. He or she is able to relate details about where the cat lives, what the cat looks like, what the cat likes to do, and how he or she feels about the cat.
Organization and Focus: The student writes about a cat, which shows an understanding of the prompt. The student’s drawing focuses more on the flowers than on the favorite animal.
Style: The student’s oral interpretation of his or her writing includes descriptive words, but many of the written words do not have letter sound matches. It is therefore unclear if the student actually attempted to write the words that he or she uses in the retelling. In one instance, however, the student says the cat is “wild cat” and has used the letters “YK” to approximate the spelling. Though the student also says that the cat is “fat,” he or she does not say this where the word “fat” is written on the paper. The oral words flow together to create complete ideas, but the student’s actual written words do not flow together.
Conventions: The shaky letters suggest that the student has undeveloped fine motor skills, but he or she is able to write most letters so that they can be read and so that they move from left to right across the page. It is unclear where words begin and end due to the random spacing. Though a couple of words such as “me” and “cat” begin with the appropriate letter matches (“M” and “C/K), and “cat” is spelled correctly once, the use of “M” and “C” for “me” and “cat” is not consistent and most of the words do not contain any matches.”
Notes: The writing demonstrates some letter-sound correspondence and the student attempts multi-syllable words.
Ideas and Content: The student is able to explain his or her writing and includes details such as where unicorns live, what they look like, and what color they are. The student cleverly tries to get his or her ideas across even when he or she cannot write all of the words, writing “Look like (picture)” and includes a drawing of a unicorn’s head in place of the words.
Organization and Focus: Most of the paper is organized and focused except for the word “gas” at the top of the page. This word is from the dictation sentence on the previous page. The student’s drawing shows a unicorn with colored hooves and horn and an uncolored (white) body, which matches his or her oral description.
Style: The one adjective the student uses is the word “white.” The student attempts to write sentences, but does not write complete sentences (“Look like (picture),”) and does not correctly match all sounds to words. In the sentence “They sleep outside on the mountains,” the student writes “L OtW SDMOtAZ,” which contains only some of the sounds for some of the words in the sentence.
Conventions: Most of the letters are legible with the exception of the title. The student independently spells using some beginning, middle, and ending sounds “outside,” “OtwSD,” “mountains,” “MOtAZ,” and “unicorn,” “UWCN.”
Gloss: Cat (title) Cat food. Home with people. You can have a cat in homes. Cat. In your homes cat. I love cat. I love cat. I love cat. I love cat much. You can see I love much. I love cat much much!
Notes: The student writes by focusing on known standard spellings and uses some phonetic spelling.
Ideas and Content: Though the student is able to write many words, he or she does not express ideas that convey many details. He or she stays with “safe” sentences that do not really tell the reader much.
Organization and Focus: The student is able to write multiple sentences about the same topic, and draws a picture that reflects what he or she has written.
Style: The student uses the adverb “much” to describe how he or she loves, but does not include any other descriptive words to add interest or variety to the writing. The sentences do not flow due to the word order (“in homes cat”) and lack of complete thoughts or ideas (“cat food”), but show some attempt to join words to create ideas.
Conventions: The strength of the student’s writing is his or her standard spelling of words he or she knows. For other unknown words, the student includes beginning, middle, and end sounds (“fod” for food,” “mach” for “much”). The student does not include standard spacing, but makes words somewhat distinguishable by beginning each word with a capital letter.
Gloss: Monkey.
Notes: The student writes one letter.
Ideas and Content: The student is able to convey that his or her picture is a monkey and that the word written is “monkey.” Though the drawing is simplistic, it includes details such as the bananas and digits on the monkey’s hands and feet. This tells that the writer has some ideas about monkeys, even though he or she does not have writing skills that are developed enough to articulate them.
Organization and Focus: The focus of both the writing and illustration is on the monkey.
Style: The student is unable to score points for style because he or she does not write a complete idea or include descriptive vocabulary.
Conventions: The student uses the correct beginning sound for “monkey” but does not demonstrate if he or she can move left to write or separate words.
Gloss: Zebra (title) Zebras have stripes. They are black and white. They live in Africa where it is hot. The ground is dry. The sky is always blue. It is always sunny. They like it there. They go like this high! They run like lightning.
Notes: The student writes an in-depth informational piece using sentences and many standard and phonetic spellings.
Ideas and Content: It is obvious that the student has a lot of ideas he or she wants to share. He or she uses many details to describe how zebras look and where they live.
Organization and Focus: Though the student digresses from the topic of zebras to tell about Africa (“The ground is dry”), he or she is able to tell multiple ideas about zebras (they have stripes, they are black and white, they live in Africa…”).
Style: This very capable kindergarten writer is able to connect words together that sound like sentences and uses multiple descriptive words.
Conventions: The student uses legible letters that not only move from left to right, but also understands how to wrap sentences from line to line. It is easy to read the student’s words because of letter sound matching and spacing.
Gloss: Dog. (title?) It is a dog.
Notes: The student writes one sentence.
Ideas and Content: The student writes a complete sentence, but does not elaborate on his or her idea with any details. The drawing however includes details such as whiskers, ears, and a tail, but does not show any identifying markings such as color, spots, fur, etc.
Organization and Focus: The student writes on the topic (animals) of the prompt, but does not write anything about the animal.
Style: The student’s words flow together to sound like a sentence, but the writing lacks color without any adjectives or adverbs.
Conventions: The student demonstrates a solid knowledge of correct spacing, spelling, and letter formation.
Gloss: Dog (title) It likes to eat dog biscuits. It can live at home. Brown with black spots.
Notes: The student writes multiple sentences.
Ideas and Content: The student is able to express his or her ideas easily on paper. Both the illustration and the writing include details.
Organization and Focus: The student demonstrates a clear understanding of the prompt. The student’s illustration matches the writing nicely in that it uses a brown background and black spots on the dog. The writing also tells the reader what the dog likes to eat and where it lives.
Style: The student makes the writing vivid through the use of adjectives describing color, “brown with black spots” as well as specific words “dog biscuits” instead of simply saying “dog food.” The first two sentences show an understanding of sentence construction, but the last line is a sentence fragment.
Conventions: The student uses correct letter formation and demonstrates an understanding of capital and lowercase letters. Though the first two words are close together, the rest of the writing shows that the student has some understanding of how to appropriately space words.
Gloss: My dog (title) My dog is a big help. My dog color is brown. My dog lives in a house.
Notes: The student writes complete sentences, however, he or she does not use proper spacing between either words or sentences.
Ideas and Content: The student is able to tell about his or her writing and use the paper effectively to relate details about his or her pet.
Organization and Focus: The student successfully combines many different ideas about his or her dog.
Style: When read aloud, the students words flow together to sound like sentences. The student uses words such as “big,” and “brown” to add description to the piece.
Conventions: The student is able to write letters but does not understand how to space words to make the writing easier to read.
Gloss: Hyena. (title?) Sleep.
Notes: The student creates an elaborate drawing but writes only two words.
Ideas and Content: Though the student writes only two words, a careful look at the student’s illustration demonstrates that he or she has a lot of ideas to get across. The hyena with jagged back hair and whiskers is drawn standing on a hay bale overlooking a detailed farm with a fence, barn, silo or house.
Organization and Focus: The student’s writing does not progress beyond one word, but it is clear that the student understands the prompt. Though the picture and writing are both about hyenas, the illustration shows a hyena awake and the writing is about a sleeping hyena.
Style: Because the student has written only one word and a possible title, he or she does not have enough text to demonstrate a writing style.
Conventions: The limited writing that is present shows a good understanding of letter formation. The two words can be easily identified as separate words, but because they are on two separate lines, it is not completely clear if the student understands how to show distinction between words.
Gloss: I like ostriches. The ostrich lives in the zoo.
Notes: The student writes two simple sentences about the same topic.
Ideas and Content: The student expresses an opinion and relates one fact about ostriches (they live in a zoo).
Organization and Focus: The student combines two ideas together nicely and draws an ostrich in a cage that complements the writing perfectly.
Style: When read aloud, the words flow into sentences. The student does not use descriptive words to add color to the text.
Conventions: The student writes backward c’s and z, but they are easily identifiable as these letters. The student carefully forms all other letters correctly and uses the lines to keep the writing legible. Though the student does not use standard spellings (“leves” for “lives” “ochjes” for ostriches, “en” for “in”), he or she includes beginning, middle, and ending sounds in all of the words.