Successful Writing Collection for WriteForward - Maureen Stewart

      As many of you know, THE CEFL is developing a follow up tool to Read Forward. It is a writing assessment tool for adult literacy learners called WriteForward. This is a multi-year project and we are currently in Phase II, the framework development phase. As part of the project, the WriteForward team wants input from all stakeholders, including learners. One way we incorporated learners was the Writing Collection.

     In February, the WriteForward team conducted the Writing Collection at the college and with literacy partners across Canada. The purpose was to learn from ELL, Ac Prep, High School and career learners what they can write and what they want to be able to write. I did mini-presentations to five English Language Learning literacy classes, five Ac Prep classes and three high school classes. A very big thank you to the CEFL instructors who participated! David Kemp, Stephanie Baier-Scott, Patricia Pryce, Lorna Houck, Mary Smith, and Ann Hanna all graciously allowed me to come to their classes for presentations and collection of samples. We also invited our Advisory Committee to participate in the Writing Collection with their learners, and Scott Henwood invited his online learners to participate as well.

     We posted a video on YouTube for the online learners and anyone else who was interested. The samples and information we received were interesting and diverse. We received everything from poetry to shopping lists to essays. The learners provided us with many excellent examples of writing they do at home, work and in their community. We have classified the contributions into home, work and community, and we will further classify them into skills. The results from the classifications will help to guide us in developing the framework for WriteForward, as well as item writing when we begin to create the tests.

     If you are interested in learning more about WriteForward, feel free to contact either Maureen Stewart or Deanna Jager for more information, or visit our website writeforward.ca Thanks again to the instructors for their support of the project and the Writing Collection!