ABSTRACT
This chapter explores three ways of collecting data about our students as writers: looking in depth at the work of an individual student, looking at the work of a group of five students at a time on a regular basis, and taking a quick look at the whole class. The goal in looking at children's writing is for us to be informed and instructed by our students: who they are as writers, what they know, and what they need to learn. The chapter presents the work of five kindergartners as a way to model this small-group assessment. It shows four samples that represent the work they did between late September when they began working in their Drawing & Writing Books and this day in mid-November. The chapter explains how we looked at the work and what we documented as a result of that looking.
