This year, all students in grades 6-11 are taking part in a writing benchmark pilot, and many have recently completed the first round. Writing is a critical tool for learning. Regular writing practice helps students organize, clarify, and connect complex ideas across subjects while building vocabulary, communication skills, and confidence in expressing reasoned arguments to a range of audiences.
With this in mind, we created these benchmarks to identify areas where students are demonstrating strengths, as well as areas that may need continued attention and support. The benchmarks will also help us reflect on the curricular materials and instructional practices we are using. Because this is a pilot, we are looking at results across groups of students rather than analyzing individual scores. Individual results will not be shared with families this year and will not factor into student grades.
The writing benchmarks align with the grade-level reading and writing standards in the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for English Language Arts and Literacy. For each benchmark, students listen to a text read aloud and then write a response to a prompt about the text. This year, our focus genre is literary analysis.
We will administer the next set of writing benchmarks in late winter or early spring. If you have any questions about this writing initiative, please feel free to reach out to Lindsay Frigo (lfrigo@nrsd.net), Curriculum Director for ELA and SS, or Laura Friend (lfriend@nrsd.net), Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning.