This post is to start the year with some absolutely delightful examples of pupils' work. Have a look and see if it brightens your day the same way it did mine!
 |
| Year 9 French Written Assessment October |
 |
| Year 9 French Written Assessment October |
These are done in test conditions without special warning or preparation. You can see from the tickbox criteria at the bottom that the pupils understand that writing spontaneously from French they know, will score at a different level than pre-planning and learning. In fact, I shouldn't have used the words "score" or "level", because the statements are descriptive and informative rather than linked to ranking or judgements.
You can see that the pupils have also commented on their work, starting with specifying that they challenged themselves to write this using their own repertoire of French. They may also have volunteered a comment on the quality of the work, or further information on their experience of the process of creating it.
Here are some more.
 |
| Year 9 Writing Assessment October |
Perhaps the most important thing for me here, is that this writing assessment is not an exercise in demonstrating that they can correctly use certain items of language. In all cases, the pupils are driven by wanting to say things. True things, fun things, silly things, imaginary things, sad things, vindictive things, and sometimes run out of things and not really know what to put things. Their comments at the end show that sometimes they know that things weren't quite "right" or that they took risks. They are doing this in the confidence that both they and the reader understand they are on a journey with language learning, where their ability to express themselves is central and being developed.
There are aspects of this work that I can follow up in another post: How does this written work correspond to their ability to speak with increasing fluency? What feedback should I give on the work? What does it show about chunking of language versus manipulation of atomised language? I have plenty to say on all of these, both to them and also on here. But for now, let's start the year by just enjoying and celebrating this!
 |
| Year 9 Written Assessment October |
