PATHWAYS TO WRITING

• Notes capitalization, grammar, and spelling errors with multiple spelling suggestions.
• Provides an overall essay score as well as scores for individual writing traits.
• Suggests relevant tutorials based on student scores and prompt genre.
• Students using WPP in school can engage in peer-to-peer collaboration and feedback.
• Teachers can add their own feedback and suggestions to a student's essay.
• Teachers can edit a student's scoring level to score essays based on different grade level standards.

These reports allow teachers to view their class averages by trait, total score, and writing genre. Individual student performance reports show trait and total score averages.

Allow teachers to monitor how students are performing on specific prompts and how the prompts are being utilized in the class. Includes multiple options for sorting and viewing data as well as individual trait scores. 

Show teachers how much students use the WPP program. The report lists the number of student essays, drafts, and submissions.

Allows teachers to monitor class progress by month and across three years. 

View Narrative Rubric

View Informative Rubric

View Argumentative Rubric

Pathways to Writing with WPP is an online writing program that provides a platform for students to practice and improve their writing skills. Once students submit their essays, they receive immediate feedback with an enhanced analysis of their writing that helps inform the revision process. 


WPP is organized by grade levels 3 to 12 with a variety of Narrative, Informative, and Argumentative stimulus-based and non-stimulus prompts available at each grade level. 

To keep pace with the developmental progression of students’ writing skills, the scoring standards change from one grade level to the next.

Student writing is reliably scored using PEG, an automated essay-scoring algorithm. The scoring models have been verified to agree with human readers over 90 percent of the time. 

No. WrAP and Pathways to Writing complement each other. WrAP is a diagnostic assessment tool that helps identify strengths and weaknesses in student writing. WrAP reports can guide curriculum decisions, instructional goals, and provide language for enriched conversations about writing.

Pathways to Writing provides 24/7 opportunities for individual students to practice their writing skills. The key word is practice.  Pathways to Writing is an instructional tool for use inside (and outside) the classroom that provides students unlimited online writing practice. In addition, it is a practice platform for the WrAP stimulus-based prompts as it offers a wide variety of prompts with accompanying text(s).

Staff and member school educators experienced in teaching and assessment develop the writing prompts. New prompts are added each year. Prompts are crafted to elicit the best writing from students who come from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.

Pathways to Writing scoring rubrics are genre specific. The descriptions of each trait differ depending on genre to provide more informative feedback for students. Traits include:

• Development of Ideas: Unique descriptions for all genres. 
• Organization: Unique description for Narrative; Informative and Argumentative share descriptions.             
• Style: Unique description for Narrative; Informative and Argumentative share descriptions.
• Sentence Structure: Unique description for Narrative; Informative and Argumentative share descriptions.                       
• Word Choice: Same descriptions for all genres.
• Conventions: Same descriptions for all genres.

Student writing is automatically saved every 60 seconds. As soon as the student submits an essay for scoring, feedback is immediate and scores for each trait appear as a graph. An analysis for students to use in the revision process is also included. In addition, Pathways to Writing provides students with links to trait-specific tutorials based on their writing. Student portfolios save all essays and scores from year to year.

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View Policy

Based on your school’s assessment plan, benchmark and interim prompts can be selected for use throughout the year. The Benchmark and Interim goal for stimulus-based prompts is at least a 3.0 across traits. The goal for non-stimulus prompts is at least a 4.0 across traits. Schools can choose to see growth in like genres over time or across genres. Multiple genres and writing purposes should be explored throughout the year as needed by your curriculum and teachers. WPP rubrics clearly articulate quality writing across genres and prompt types and are reliable indicators of where to target next step instruction.