Dialogic writing assessment in the history classroom

In this chapter, the authors discuss how, in the discipline of history, the dialogic assessment approach to writing conferences can allow teachers to assess and teach students' historical thinking along with their writing. Dialogic assessment is an approach to conducting 1:1 writing conferences designed to elicit a student's live composing-including idea generation, planning, drafting, and revision-through structured questions and prompts. The authors provide a rationalefor this method of writing instruction, highlighting its connections to historical thinking and writing. The chapter also depicts examples of teacher mediational moves that support students ' writing and historical thinking processes, and several examples of how the first author used these moves in his classroom with a ninth-grade student. It concludes with a discussion of affordances and challenges, along with suggestions for how practitioners can overcome typical obstacles to enacting this practice with students.