“I Speak Alabama”: Toward Innovations in Developing Writing Assessments That Honor the Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Elementary Students’ Writing

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Cultural Diversity and Interactional Processes in the Teaching of Writing

Abstract

Despite research on teaching writing with culturally and linguistically diverse learners, little has changed in terms of developing assessments that actually document their assets (Ball & Muhammad, 2003). Kinloch (2010) aptly notes that, “If students do have a right to their own language and if educators are to truly affirm that right, then alternative assessment measures should be devised to evaluate student success and progress” (p. 133). This paper draws on two elementary students’ use of their own language while learning to write in the persuasive genre. Analysis of these students’ writing illustrates the inadequacies of writing rubrics and the need to (re)vision them in order to truly honor students’ right to their language and document their cultural and linguistic assets.

Author

• Margarita Zisselsberger, Loyola University Maryland