The "new" CUNY test/CAAW/CATW

Though I still have not exactly 'taught' at my Reading/Writing course at Hostos, I have started the "co-teaching" paperwork a.k.a. grading papers. So my co-teacher and I began with a basic assessment of writing using the new CUNY test that is replacing the original ACT test this coming October 2010. Though I did a bit of grading papers and giving feedback to writing assignments in my internship this past summer, I was not extensively given a stack of papers to read and make critical notes about their writing based on this new "CATW" test that has not yet been evaluated by many teachers or whatnot.

Basically, the new test requires students to read a small passage and then respond to it by giving a short summary of the reading and selecting one significant idea from the text and expanding the idea by using outside information like textual, film/tv, and personal experiences to support the thesis. There are 2 classes that I co-teach: one in the afternoons and one in the evenings. The ones in the afternoon seem to have mostly students who seem younger that just graduated from high school. On the other hand, the ones in the evening class are the "Adults" and all seem to come to class straight from their full-time jobs.

Though both groups of students are very dedicated to the class and are hard-working, sometimes the teacher and I feel like there is more energy going on in the evening and there is perhaps a bigger sacrifice taken by those students who manage to make it on time to class and really participate and do their parts. My purpose of introducing my students and the test was to better evaluate their responses to the writing assessment. All in all, there were 5 different kinds of essays that I saw from the students, from both classes:

1) summary of the whole reading with little or no response

• Students from both classes had this kind of essay, but most students from the evening class had this kind of essay
• They were able to fully summarize the text extensively and highlight the most important points with only 1-2 sentences of their own response to each point

2) brief summary in intro and mostly response to their own idea of the topic which was "Friendship" in this case

• Again, both classes had this kind of essay but most of the students who had this kind of essay was from the Afternoon class
• After briefly summarizing the text in the introduction, instead of taking out an idea from the passage they went into details about their own point of view of "friendship"

3) No summary and their own response of their idea of "friendship"

• There were only one or two people who came up with this, which were mostly from the afternoon class

4) No summary and no response to Friendship, miscomprehension of the whole thing (the reading & the directions of the writing)

• Not many people made this mistake, except one person who has a lot of trouble with English so that could've been a factor

5) Took 1 idea out and expanded

• Only 3 people out of the Afternoon class had this & 1 from the Evening class
• Of course, they still could have given more details and support for each of their paragraphs and developed their ideas more extensively, but they actually followed directions more accurately compared to other students in the class

My evaluation is that those students who just graduated from high school and had to pass the English Regents are more used to reading passages and responding to the text critically and/or just responding to the whole idea. Also, they are able to better summarize the text in a more brief manner. There is still a lot of improvement that can be made to both classes' writings but I feel like there are students from the Evening class who have not written for years and are now asked to read and write a response,which can be a very difficult task. It is also interesting to see how some students make the same errors and yet each one stay true to their identity and way of writing.

This is going to be one hell of a semester.