Writing Assessments - Grades 3, 5, and 8

Georgia students are administered performance-based writing assessments to students in grades three, five, eight, and eleven. The purpose of the statewide writing assessment is to improve writing and writing instruction.

ELEMENTARY GRADES WRITING ASSESSMENTS - GRADES 3 AND 5

Grade Three Writing Assessments
The writing assessment for grade three requires teachers to evaluate the writings of students using a Developmental Stage scoring rubric. Third grade students are given opportunities throughout the academic year to demonstrate the different types of writing required by the state curriculum (personal experience, imaginative story, responding to literature, and responding to content). Using multiple samples of student writing, a holistic scoring rubric is used to determine the writing stage of the student.

SCORES

Grade Five Writing Assessments
The writing assessments for grade five students consists of an evaluation of each student student response to an assigned prompt. Students assigned a topic in one of two genres, imaginative story or personal narrative. Trained raters use a holistic scoring rubric to determine the writing stage of the student.

SCORES

MIDDLE GRADES WRITING ASSESSMENT (MGWA) - GRADE 8

The MGWA is administered to students in the eighth grade. Trained rates evaluate a student's response to an assigned prompt. The student response may be narrative, expository, or persuasive. The student is allowed to select the genre of writing that they are most knowledgeable of and have the most interest in.

An analytic scoring rubric is used to evaluate a student's response. The scoring rubric covers five areas of writing which are referred to as domains. These domains include Content/Organization, Style, Usage, Mechanics, and Sentence Formation. The papers are rated twice in each of the five domains. Each domain carries a different weight. A student's final score on MGWA is an indication of the overall impression of the student's grasp of the components in the five domains.

SCORES

For more information about the Georgia Writing Assessment, please look at the Georgia Department of Education website.