The National Writing Project’s (NWP) College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) offers teachers a model for analyzing student work with the purpose of guiding instruction to better meet the needs of the students. The Using Sources Tool (UST) is a formative assessment tool that teachers use in the middle of a Cycle of Instruction to provide a focused look at the quality of students’ claims and how they select and use evidence from sources. The tool combines a series of scaled questions related to use of source material and a short narrative question to name next instructional steps. Using this tool has resulted in lively and productive conversations among teachers, supporting them in identifying next teaching steps for their students. The UST is not intended to be used to evaluate individual teachers or to score student writing, but rather to be used collaboratively as part of C3WP Professional Development. Resources for Introducing the UST in Professional Development can be found here.

A team of C3WP teacher-leaders have recently developed a Student Version of the UST and an instructional sequence for introducing the Student Using Sources Tool in the classroom to be used in conjunction with the Teacher Using Sources Tool.