Do you love to write?  Do you want to improve your writing? Learning to be a writer takes practice. This mini spark will give you a took to use to think about what makes a writing piece exceptional.

Spark your thinking!

1. Set up your language arts mini spark recording page: #12: Evaluating Writing

2. One thing you can do to help you become a better writer is to evaluate, or critique, another person’s writing. This website has a large collection of student writing pieces.  Scroll through the list to find the grade level that fits you and then choose the type of writing you want to use for this mini spark. Record these two items on your recording sheet.

3. Choose a piece of writing to read and evaluate. Read it one time. Add a 3 sentence summary of what you read to your recording sheet.

4. Print this rubric as a guide to help you critique the writing piece you chose. Read it over carefully. On your recording sheet write a sentence about what will be easy to do when evaluating writing and one about what might be harder.

5. On your recording sheet, respond with the following:

• The title of the piece you chose to evaluate
• The rating (1-4) for Linguistic Complexity and a brief explanation for the rating
• The rating (1-4) for Vocabulary Usage and a brief explanation for the rating
• The rating (1-4)  for Language Control and a brief explanation for the rating

6. Share your language arts mini spark recording page with your teacher/EY coordinator.