Week 10 Term 3: English Department: PART TWO - NCEA Level 1 English Internal Assessment: 1.2 91926 (September 15 - September 19)

 In my previous post I outlined and reviewed the new NCEA Level 1 English internal assessment (1.2: 91926) that we have been focusing on this term. You can see the review and outline of the assessment here - see Alby's Blog Post Entry - 08/09/25. In this post I am going outline the unit that we have designed for this assessment and comment on how the student's have responded to the unit so far. 

Designing the Unit for 91926

There are three pieces of writing that we can explicitly teach (spend a week on each) plan, draft for each style of writing. The three styles of writing that we aimed to teach explicitly were:

1. Narrative Writing
2. Personal Account Writing
3. Opinion Writing

When the assessment comes around, tell students that they can do any type of writing but remind them that we have done three types of writing. Once the assessment starts, they recommend 6-8 hours for the assessment (from the introduction of the assessment to the crafting of the text). The assessment window needs to run consecutively (two week period). Ideally students are not receiving any scaffolding or feedback for their work during the assessment period. We want to ensure that we set clear expectations, this is independently writing without any feedback. Students can do handwritten drafts and the students can type out their final draft. This is good, we can see the progression of the student’s writing. We can give general feedback, focused on the assessment criteria only. They can use a basic spell check and grammar check. 

We ended up choosing to focus on two styles of writing (Personal Account Writing and Narrative Writing). We created a unit for each style of writing that had a text for the students to read, a response to text study and plan that the students had to complete for that style of writing. It is imperative in the unit that the students complete each task for each style of writing and that they complete the plan for that style. 

Personal Account Writing Text Study

Narrative Writing Text Study

The plan ensures that they have an idea on what they would do and how they would write the text if they chose that particular style. The students had to choose ONE genre and style of writing that you have covered in class. Either PERSONAL ACCOUNT WRITING or NARRATIVE WRITING. 

Student response so far

NCEA Level 1 English students working on draft 1 for 91926

NCEA Level 1 English students working on draft 1 for 91926 

The response has been positive. The students have really connected with Personal Account Writing and they have enjoyed creating a text that is grounded in their personal experience and voice. Many of our students have opted to write in the style of Personal Account Writing. We are really pleased with how the student's have engaged and embraced the unit. The students are currently working on their first draft (which is hand written). They will complete their final draft online during the last two weeks of Term 3 (Week 9 and Week 10). We are looking forward to closing this internal assessment at the end of Week 1 Term 4. The student's response to this new assessment has been positive and we can see how they have instantly connected to the idea of writing, crafting and creating texts that resonate with them on a creative and personal level.