Skill Areas

The skill areas assessed are:

• Genre
• Textual grammar
• Syntax/Punctuation

Content

Reach Writing assesses students’ ability to write an extended response to a given task. One of two forms of writing, narrative or persuasive, will be assessed. All students are given an age-appropriate task in the same genre.

Writing is marked on a common scale, that is, all scripts, regardless of year level, are marked using the same criteria. Marking criteria are adjusted to suit the task. The strength of the common scale is increased with the use of a common task across year levels. This makes the scores that students achieve comparable with each other. This ability to make such direct comparisons can inform whole-school teaching strategies and programs. In reports, however, each student’s result is only compared to the results of his/her peers in the same year level.