Prompts offered in the Differentiated Science Writing (K-5) section of the course are additional opportunities for students to practice their writing in a low-stakes environment.
Organized by Reporting Category (CAT), there are nine topics in K-2 and 12 topics in 3-5. Each topic includes Learn Videos and differentiated sentence stems:
- K-1: Level 1, Level 2
- 2-5: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Advanced High
Teachers assign topics at their discretion and direct students on which of the leveled prompts to do. Although they can be assigned in any order, we recommend assigning themes related to a unit of study students are learning in one of their core subject areas.
Scoring Differentiated Writing Responses
These compositions are not auto-scored and will need to be scored by the teacher. To score your students' writing in the Differentiated Science Writing section, follow the steps outlined below.
1. Navigate to your desired class and select Reports, then Science Literacy.
2. Under Science Literacy, select Differentiated Science Writing.
3. Select the Pending activity. You can also select the hyperlinked student name to see the student’s activity table.
4. Select Score: in the green bar to open the built-in rubrics. Use the PLDs tab to view the descriptors for each level. Select the Comments tab to provide feedback in the text box. Navigate to the ELPS or TEKS tabs for additional support. Score and select Save when you are done.
5 After saving your score for each of the constructed responses, select Finish review to apply all changes made.
6. You can go back to the Differentiated Science Writing Report to see the updated grade. The average rating for the scored activity will now appear here. You can select the score to review the responses or revise the score if needed.
If you select the hyperlinked student name in your report, you can use the Student dropdown menu to quickly toggle between different students.
Tags: science_writing, scienceliteracy, rating science responses