Time to Sharpen Your Pencils!

All 7^th graders, it's time to sharpen your pencils and your writing skills. Feb. 19 will be a mentally challenging day for all seventh graders because that is when the Alabama Direct Assessment of Writing (ADAW) will be held. For the past few weeks, 7^th graders have been writing non-stop in their English classes for practice for this major test. All of the teachers have been encouraging them to do their best on this test and with that encouragement and practice they will do well. The ADAW is focused upon letting the Board of Education know how well we students can write. It also shows how well our teachers have been teaching us and what kind of things they have taught us. 

This assessment will be timed for 60 minutes giving students an hour to take the test. The writing performances are expository, descriptive, narrative, and persuasive. Students will have a prompt within these four areas. The students will be graded with a score of zero to four.

Zero means that they didn't do so well on this assessment ; the score one shows that they don't really understand how to write that topic. The score two shows a little bit of understanding. Three shows that they do understand very well and show author control.

If they receive a score of four it means that their writing skills are above average, and they expressed their details very thoroughly and clearly, and have author control. They will also be graded on their organization, (which is brainstorming) grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure.

Mr. Jeff McDonald, GSMS language arts teacher, said this about the assessment, "I think that the number one mistake that all students make at Gulf Shores Middle School is that they don't stay on topic or subject and we need to work on that!"  With all the help from the teachers, students should be well prepared for the assignment.

By: Sarah Jarrett & Autumn Poe; 7^th

Harleigh Wilson writes a story for English class.
Photo By: Caroline Tilley