ICAS Writing

Download examples of students' writing at high levels of achievement in the early , middle ( Script 1 , Script 2 ) and later years of schooling.
Download Writing practice questions
Hints and tips for participating in ICAS

The International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) – Writing assess students’ ability to write an extended response to a given task. Two forms of writing - narrative and argument - are assessed in alternating years. Students may be asked to develop an aspect of narrative writing, such as a character description or a conclusion to a short story, or types of arguments such as expositions, discussions or reviews.

In 2008, the ICAS Writing task will focus on an aspect of the narrative genre.

All students - from early primary through to late secondary - are given age-appropriate tasks in the same genre. The stimulus provided to the students is adapted to the interest levels of students from Paper A to Paper J to ensure that the task is appropriate to the experience and interest of all groups of students.

ICAS – Writing is a criterion-referenced assessment. This means that the assessment is marked against criteria which are specific to the task. It also means that each student’s work is assessed against the same marking scheme. In a criterion-referenced assessment, every mark that a student scores has a particular meaning. For example, a student scoring 29 marks has demonstrated 29 aspects of writing as identified in the marking criteria as appropriate for that task.

The marking criteria are divided into four domains or sections: Genre , Textual Grammar , Syntax and Spelling .

Genre

Marking criteria in the domain of Genre assess the ways in which the text has been structured and specific stylistic and vocabulary choices that have been made to achieve the writer’s purpose and engagement of the reader. The best texts will demonstrate a creative and skilful integration of structure and language choices in order to do this.

Textual Grammar

The features of Textual Grammar which are assessed include the correct use of tense and the ways in which tense can be manipulated to strengthen the writing; the correct use of pronouns, conjunctions and connectives to assist the reader in following the text; and the ability to correctly structure a variety of different types of sentences, including complex sentences, for effect.

Syntax

Syntax includes marking criteria which assess correct use of sentence grammar, including subject-verb agreement, the correct use of prepositions, articles, plurals and punctuation.

Spelling

Spelling assesses a student’s demonstrated ability to correctly spell words of increasing levels of complexity.

Each marking criterion can have a range of up to five scores (0-4). A score of 0 will indicate that achievement of the criterion has not been attained. Score points 1 to 4 are each described by a statement of achievement. For example, at a score of 3 a student will have satisfied the standards described by scores 1, 2 and 3 but will not have demonstrated the standard described by score 4. In this sense the scoring can be seen as cumulative.

One of the benefits of a criterion-referenced approach to assessment is its potential to provide valuable diagnostic information about each student’s strengths and weaknesses. It gives clear indications for individual student requirements and can assist teachers with diagnostic information for planning their teaching programs.

Having common marking criteria for all students from Years 3 to 12 also allows their achievements to be placed on a common scale when the results are reported. A common scale allows parents and teachers to track a student’s progress from year to year as well as to make comparisons with the student’s cohort and the cohort(s) in the year level(s) above and below. A mean score (average) is calculated for each year level enabling legitimate comparisons to be drawn. In addition, the full range of scores achieved by each year level is also provided.

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