Dakota state writing tests

The Dakota Writing test is an evaluation tool to assess students writing performance. The assessment contains prompts in four modes: descriptive, narrative, expository, and persuasive that elicits a rough-draft response from the student. The State of South Dakota mandates Grades 5, 7, and 10 be assessed. The Dakota Writing test gives us as teachers a measurement on how the student does in six basic areas, The areas being Ideas and Development, Organization and Coherence, Word Choice, Sentence and Paragraphs, Grammar and Usage, and Writing Mechanics. The window for testing across South Dakota is February 23-27, and at Duel they will be given either Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. These tests are not timed but would take approximately 50 minutes. We as a district have chosen them to be given during the students regular English class time. All public schools in SD are required to take the Writing Assessment. The Dakota Writing test has existed for a number of years but has changed names, and forms over the years. The results are used to compare and look at our English/Language Arts curriculum and see if there are any of the six areas we need to improve in. This can be done of changing or adding to our curriculum or spending more class time focusing on weakness.