Welcome to MY Access!® eNews, a publication from Vantage Learning created specifically for MY Access!® users!  MY Access! eNews highlights specific features of MY Access!, spotlights success stories sent to us by MY Access users, and shares topical information of interest to educators. If you would like to contribute, please email  scoringcenter@vantage.com.

Introducing Writing Support and Scoring Services

Vantage Writing Support and Scoring Services provides custom, human scoring services for users whose students respond to Vantage pilot prompts. We encourage teachers to submit their own custom writing prompts that closely match their curriculum needs to be developed into MY Access!® pilot prompts.  Essays written to these prompts can then be human scored by the Vantage Writing Support and Scoring Services team.  Once a sufficient number of sample essays have been collected, the writing prompt can then be modeled for automatic IntelliMetric® scoring.  (Future blogs will discuss the prompt development process and IntelliMetric® scoring.)

Alternately, teachers can assign one of the many Vantage pilot prompts already loaded into MY Access!® to their students and have those responses scored by the Vantage Writing Support and Scoring Services team.  Since feedback is vital to encourage students to improve their writing, MY Access!® allows students to submit pilot prompt essays to Vantage Writing Support and Scoring Services directly through the program and to receive scores and feedback right in their portfolios within one to three weeks.  To contact Vantage Writing Support and Scoring Services, email Joan at scoringcenter@vantage.com.

Meet the Team:

Writing Support and Scoring Services currently consists of four members, including a Coordinator and three Assessment Specialists, all with graduate degrees and experience in the field of education and assessment.  You may have emailed or spoken with Joan, Coordinator for Writing Support and Scoring Services, or had essays scored by Assessment Specialists Damon, Erica, or Julie.

Joan

Joan loves interacting with educators in her position coordinating the Writing Support and Scoring Services Center at Vantage Learning.  She has a B.A. in Biology and an M.Ed. in Elementary Education.

Damon

Damon enjoyed the challenges of the elementary school classroom before bringing his strong literature and writing background to Vantage Learning.  His responsibilities within Writing Support and Scoring Services include scoring essays, writing prompts, and training scorers for MY Access!®.  Damon holds a B.A. in English Literature and a M.Ed. in Educational Assessment.

Erica

As an Assessment Specialist with Vantage’s Writing Support and Scoring Services, Erica is busy scoring essays, writing prompts and Writer’s Models, and working on prompt alignments.  Erica holds a B.A. degree, **** laude, in Communications/Print Journalism and a M.Ed. in secondary English education.

Julie

Julie is the newest member to the Writing Support and Scoring Services team, and has been kept busy scoring pilot prompt essays, reviewing non-scoreable essays and writing Writer’s Models, among other activities. Julie holds a B.S. in Early Childhood/Elementary Education, an ESL program specialist certificate, and a M.A. in Elementary Education.  

Writing Support and Scoring Services

 We’re always busy within Writing Support and Scoring Services:

• developing prompts; (see new prompts in the “Monthly Update” Forum)
• aligning prompts;
• scoring pilot prompt essays;
• reviewing non-scoreable essays;
• developing training sets; and
• creating Writer’s Models.

The Writing Support and Scoring Services team develops prompts, diligently works to hand-score pilot prompt essays as requested by teachers, and reviews non-scoreable essays within 24 hours of their arrival in the non-scoreables pool.  In addition, the team develops IntelliMetric® prompts from student-submitted essays to pilot prompts. 

Writing Support and Scoring Services is also responsible for prompt development and alignment.  The team is constantly developing new prompts at the elementary, middle, and high school level, as well as for higher education in the areas of literary, text-based, informative/expository, narrative, and persuasive writing.  Lastly, prompts are aligned to state standards and the most widely used basal textbooks. We invite you to use one or more of these prompts in conjunction with your reading assignments to help your students improve their writing and deepen their understanding of the texts themselves.

Let us Know Your Ideas

We always appreciate teacher input so we can better target our prompt writing to address the needs of our users.  So, work with us to develop new pilot prompts by completing the Prompt Submission Worksheet with your MY Access!® prompt suggestion and faxing it to us at 267-756-1074.

Join our forum to access MY Access!® prompts for Black History and Women in History Month.  We look forward to reading your ideas on using these prompts in your classroom lessons.

Writing Support and Scoring Services welcomes you to MY Access!® eNews and hopes you stay tuned as we post new topics.  For more information about Writing Support and Scoring Services and My Access!®, contact  scoringcenter@vantage.com .

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 16th, 2008 at 3:01 pm and is filed under MY Access! eNews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.