Preparing for PACT Writing

In order to prepare for the PACT writing portion, I decided to have the kids analyze and evaluate some student writing samples. I first created a kid-friendly PACT writing rubric, based on the official PACT rubric. I used our classroom language, words we use to describe and talk about the writing process. The four areas in which our kids' writing will be evaluated are content, organization, voice, and conventions. Students can score a 0-4 in each area (except for voice which has a high score of 3). We evaluated one writing sample together, then partners got together to evaluate one on their own. Partners then met up with another set of partners to discuss and defend their evaluations. I learned our students are very tough evaluators! They had extremely high standards for writing. Afterwards, we talked about how this activity would affect our own writing on the PACT test. Many students were able to clearly articulate their own goals for PACT writing. I was extremely pleased with how well our students were able to critique writing AND identify effective writing strategies they could use.

Naomi and Jordan are working as partners to evaluate the writing sample. You can see the writing rubric in front of Jordan.


Here is a group of four discussing their evaluations. Groups had to defend why they gave each sample its particular score.