Dialogic Writing Assessment with Dr. Sarah Beck

Do you struggle to teach your students to be better writers in your classroom? Do you find yourself giving general feedback and a letter grade, but not having a clear understanding if the students are really improving in their writing? In this episode, I chat with Dr. Sarah Beck about using “dialogic writing assessments” to help students become better writers. This conversation centers on Dr. Beck’s article Scaffolding Students’ Writing Processes Through Dialogic Assessment.

Dr. Sarah Beck is a teacher educator and literacy researcher on the faculty at New York University. In addition to an article and book chapter on dialogic assessment in Social Studies classrooms with Andrew O. del Calvo, her publications include  A Think Aloud Approach to Writing Assessment (2018) Teachers College Press, an analysis, with Amanda Godley, of features of exemplary college application essays.  

Related Article:

Beck, S. W., Jones, K., Storm, S., & Smith, H. (2020). Scaffolding students’ writing processes through dialogic assessment. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(6), 651-660.

Other Resources:

Beck, S. & del Calvo, A. (2023) Using dialogic writing assessment to support historical literacy. Literacy, 57,1, 61-71. 10.1111/lit.12309 del Calvo, A. O. & Beck, S. (2023). 

del Calvo, A. O., & Beck, S. W. (2023). Dialogic Writing Assessment in the History Classroom. In Assessing Disciplinary Writing in Both Research and Practice (pp. 227-251). IGI Global.

Reynolds, D. (2017). Interactional scaffolding for reading comprehension: A systematic review. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 66(1), 135-156.