Writing: what the paper asks, and what we teach for it
The Department publishes how long this section runs, what it asks for and what it is marked on. Here is that structure, one real question from the app, and the four lessons that cover it.
What this section is
Writing sits in one of the two placement tests, not both. The Opportunity Class test, sat in Year 4, has no Writing section. The Selective High School test, sat in Year 6, has one:
- One task in 30 minutes, and no more than two pages. Planning space is provided, and the planning comes out of the same 30 minutes.
- A quarter of the total, the same weight as Reading, Thinking Skills and Mathematical Reasoning each carry.
- Marked by two examiners, with a third brought in if the two disagree.
The Department says it is assessed on "the creativity of your ideas and your ability to write effectively for a purpose and an audience", along with "text structure, grammar, punctuation, chosen style and the vocabulary". It also says something blunter, and it is the most useful sentence on the subject: "If you do not write about the topic, even if you write well, you will receive lower marks."
Its three published practice tasks are an advice sheet for students new to the area, a newspaper report on an incident, and a diary entry written by someone living in the future. Every one of those is a functional piece with a named audience, and two of them hand the child a list of points to cover. None is a story or an essay arguing a case, which is worth knowing before a child spends months practising the wrong thing.
None of that is our description of the section. The task, the timing, the two-page limit and the assessment list are the Department's, published on its Get ready for the placement test page, and the weighting and the double marking are in its placement procedures policy.
What we teach for it
Four lessons, each built around one real thing this section asks a child to do.
- Punctuation Repair Shop: apostrophes, commas that change meaning, dialogue marks and run-on sentences, fixed like machines.
- The Right Voice: who is reading this, and what do they need from you. Advice sheets, reports, diaries, letters, notices and instructions.
- The Sentence Smith: two short facts, one sentence, and a choice about which one lands last and what the joining word claims.
- The Blueprint: what a piece of writing is made of. One job to a paragraph, a sentence that holds the others up, and the order a reader needs.
Three of the four also open a writing door of their own, where the child writes a real piece rather than answering questions about writing. That is the next heading down.
A question, quoted whole
One question from The Right Voice, exactly as a child sees it in the app, hint and explanation included.
A doctor has written an advice sheet for children who are about to have an operation. Which sentence shows she forgot who would be reading it?
- AYou will be given a general anaesthetic prior to the procedure.
- BYou will go to sleep before it starts, and you will not feel anything at all.
- CA nurse will stay with you the whole time, and you can ask her anything.
- DYou can bring one toy with you, and it can come right up to the door.
Hint: Read all four as though you are eight years old and frightened. Which one would you have to ask somebody to explain?
Why A. Advice only works if the reader can use it. Three of these tell a child exactly what will happen in words they already have; the odd one out is written the way doctors talk to each other, so the child meets the one sentence on the page that she cannot read.
What else is in there
LearningKit will not mark your child's writing. Nothing can score a piece of prose honestly and automatically, and a number attached to a child's writing reads as a mark whatever it is called. So the app does the part that can be done properly and stops.
That means every lesson above drills a closed skill, where there is a right answer and the app can say so. Beside three of them sits a real writing task: a functional piece with a named audience, typed under the clock at the paper's own 30 minutes, kept on a shelf you and your child can both read, and handed back unmarked. Before it is put away the child answers four questions about their own piece, about that lesson's skill and no other, which is a prompt to reread rather than a score.
There is one exception, and it is paid and asked for a piece at a time. Tapping Mark with Kit sends that one piece to be read and costs a single credit. Nothing is sent unless that button is tapped, there is no setting that leaves it switched on, and choosing it for one piece says nothing about the next. What comes back is written to the child, and it is prose about the writing rather than a mark out of anything.
Against the Clock runs Writing as a fourth section at the Year 5/6 level, one task at the real 30 minutes, drawn across the three lessons that carry tasks so it is not the same one every sitting. The Year 3/4 level has no Writing section, because the test it mirrors has none.