Knowing how language works is liberating!

Punctuation and grammar play vital roles in conveying the meaning of written text.  The New Zealand Curriculum places meaning at the heart of reading and writing. PAT: Punctuation and Grammar is not a return to prescriptive teaching – rather the emphasis is on the use of punctuation and grammar in context and as tools to communicate meaning. The questions assess the skills students need in order to make meaning as they read, to write meaningful texts, and to understand the patterns of standard New Zealand English.  When writers learn how to use punctuation and grammar for effect, they gain increasing control of the writing process.

The questions are aligned with the The Literacy Learning Progressions. The results will help you assess whether your students are meeting the reading and writing demands of The New Zealand Curriculum. These results will help you determine how well your students are developing a body of knowledge about how language works.

Features

  • Designed for Year 4–10 students
  • Multiple-choice for easy, accurate marking
  • Questions are aligned with the Literacy Learning Progressions and
  • Fall into three categories: punctuation, grammar use, and grammar knowledge
  • Able to be reported using scale scores or stanines
  • Seven tests of varying difficulty, which can be administered simultaneously
  • Able to be hand-marked or marked in NZCER Assist
  • Able to track progress from year to year

Possible ways to use the assessment:

  • Understanding the writing process - the test has the important learning steps students need to be good at writing well. The tests will support and guide teachers around what can't be missed - there is always more but the data can provide good evidence to start that conversation
  • Understanding the reading process - Being a successful reader depends on reading and interpreting the author's intention by using the punctuation and grammar they use. This test provides teachers with an understanding of what clues students are, or are not, attending to and can provide scaffolds for next steps teaching.
  • Inquiry into sentence comprehension - as students face more and more sophisticated text, a skill that becomes important is understanding intructions accurately - think matths, science, almost every subject. Their ability to make sense of a sentence/paragraph is important in being successful in a task. Deliberately combining Punctuation and Grammar with the STAR test - assessing sentence/paragraph comprehension (STAR) combined with knowing what punctuation and grammar skills students have (Punctuation and Grammar), will give teachers rich information to support targetted teaching and learning to improve reading AND writing skills