Assessing Writers Reflection

Heather is a fourth-grade student. Because I am assigned to a Science/Math classroom, I have not been able to personally have a conference with Heather as she works through a writing assignment. This reflection is an analysis of her writing that I obtained from her writing journal. The analysis, also, comes from a discussion with her during the Surveys and DRA assignment. I used Carl Anderson’s book, Assessing Writers, to help analyze the two samples. I used the assessment guides, found in the appendix section, to analyze her two samples. These assessments and the writing samples can be found at the end of this essay.
Writing Initiative: Heather says that she does not like to write. In previous assessments, she has expressed dislike of
She appears to understand that this language makes her story more interesting. We would work to add more descriptive language in her writing. We would discuss including action and dialogue. I would show her examples of how a story becomes more interesting when there is action and dialogue.
To help Heather with writing conventions, I would highlight the punctuation that she did use correctly. Then, I would have her read each sentence individually and point out where she stops for breath or where she naturally pauses. In this way, she would hear where the ending of each sentence is located for periods or breaks for commas. She could benefit from having peers help her in editing her paper. She could be given a checklist for editing errors on her own. A dictionary or spelling app should be encouraged to help her when she struggles with more difficult words.
Heather shows a lack of understanding on how to punctuate a piece of dialogue. I believe I would show Heather examples of correct punctuation for dialogue in books. I would highlight where the quotation marks are inserted, how commas are used and how periods are used in quotation sentences. I would give her a copy of these examples to use when editing her