IAR Already??? Part 4

 This is part 4 of a 4 part series of posts I am hoping will help you help kids be able to better manage the experience of April's IAR test!

This post focuses on the language arts part of the IAR assessment. 

As a former ELA teacher, I know how much time and effort we put into creating meaningful writing assignments, working with kids on honing the craft of writing, and how meticulous we are about the rubrics we create to assess students' writing. We want to inspire students to be good writers, and we want the feedback they receive about their writing to be helpful so they can improve. That's why we work so hard on those rubrics. But did you know that IAR has its own rubrics it uses to score students' written responses?

I am not saying the ELA teachers should completely ditch the rubrics they have worked so hard on. But it would be very helpful to take some time to review what the test scorers are looking for when they evaluate students' writing to see what the alignment with our expectations are. It's also worth communicating this to students. Some people think this is "teaching to the test," but I beg to differ! Instead, I see this as providing students with the necessary information to complete a task that involves a particular kind of writing. Just like we teach students the difference between writing a business letter and a friendly letter, different kinds of writing tasks have different expectations. Being able to write for a variety of purposes and audiences is part of what the ELA teachers work on with kids, so sharing the rubrics is going to help with that.

Want to review the rubrics? Click here to see them! 

Are you going to use or share the IAR rubrics with your students? Share your thoughts in the comments, and I'll send you a fun emoji sticker!