Recently, I shared some of my favorite reading diagnostics for back-to-school, so today I want to share 5 writing diagnostics.
For me, teaching writing is one of the best parts of teaching ELA because students grow so much. It’s incredible to see the progress and growth students can make as writers in such a short amount of time.
Because I want to make sure my instruction matches students’ needs, I always like to offer a few low-stakes but insightful writing diagnostics at the start of the school year. These are 5 writing diagnostics I find myself using year after year.
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Informal Writing Diagnostics
As English teachers, we know that writing happens at different levels: from informal social media posts to highly-academic, specialized writing. For this reason, it’s important that students develop skills writing at a variety of levels. This helps students learn to regulate their tone. This is also why I deploy informal and more structured writing diagnostics. These are some of my favorite informal writing diagnostics:
- First, these Back-to-School Journals are an absolute favorite tool. Not only do they help assess students’ writing skills, but they help me get to know my students. I never have time to use all of these journal prompts, but selecting a few each year is just right. Since I sometimes have students several years in a row, mixing up the prompts helps keep students from addressing the same prompt twice. Read more about how I use these journals here.
- Second, writing a Letter to Yourself is a classic back-to-school writing prompt. This is a good level-up from journals because letters require a little more structure. I love using letter-writing in the high school classroom!
- Finally, at the start of the school year, I always want students to know how to contact me, and I want them to understand my expectations for a successful email. For this reason, I explicitly teach how I want students to communicate in an email. This is a writing diagnostic for structure and tone. Grab my free email rubric today!
Structured Writing Diagnostics
While informal writing certainly has its place in the English classroom, more often than not, students are producing structured writing. For this reason, it’s important to also employ structured writing diagnostics. These are two I have used over and over again.
- First, asking students to design a personal Coat of Arms is a fun (but structured) option. Of the writing diagnostics here, this one is probably my favorite. Students receive a blank Coat of Arms template to decorate with symbols that represent their lives. Then, students write about the meaning of those symbols. While this seems like a simple premise, it lends itself to a quick five paragraphs: introduction, three body paragraphs about three different symbols, and a conclusion. While there is no research or citation involved in this writing, it does provide students with a chance to show off their skills with structural elements (like topic sentences and transitions) and with using evidence from their drawing to support their claims.
- Finally, this rubric is my most-frequent tool for teaching writing. It’s a fairly straightforward rubric, but it is flexible enough to be used in a variety of writing contexts. During the first few weeks of school, students will usually read a poem, article, or short story. Then, I will ask students to write a well-developed paragraph about how the author supports their main idea or theme. Of the writing diagnostics I’ve shared, this is the most formal and the only one that requires direct quotations and in-text citations.
