Novice Picture Writing Proficiency Assessment w/ Rubric

I am trying out something new with writing in my Latin 1 classes. In previous years when I taught Latin 1, I had students doing timed writes after the first week based on readings/clipchats, but big picture, I never felt comfortable with that, because I felt like all students were doing was spitting back to me memorized sentences from the story, not necessarily any true acquired language. Since they have only had 8.5 weeks of Latin so far this year, they are "babies" when it comes to writing in the target language.

As a result, this year in my Latin 1 classes, I have been holding back on writing in Latin per se (outside of copying sentences from readings in lots of various activities or doing very guided writing. NOTE - these types of writing in the target language still have MUCH value!) so that I am not forcing output too quickly and have chosen instead rather to focusing on bathing them with sheltered vocabulary input before any true output.

After 8.5 weeks of Latin, I gave students their first written proficiency assessment based on a series of pictures which created a story (AI created the pictures). Although students had never seen the pictures before, they did mirror many of the sentences which had been in readings and also in bellringers. The difference, however, was that they had never written this many sentences before in Latin at once in one sitting and never in a sequence for the creation of a story. 

I gave them six pictures, of which there were at least 3-4 sentences which they could write for each of them. HOWEVER, I only asked them for 1-2 sentences for each picture. I debated about this:

• I knew that there would be some students who could only write one short, choppy sentence per picture.
• I also knew that there were many students who were already writing compound sentences using "and" or "because," so in writing one compound sentence, they were already demonstrating proficiency beyond the expectation.
• I was grading this on a rubric, so the minimum number of sentences was not the sole criteria but rather were they also adding details, combining details, etc in the picture?

Below is an example of one of the pictures used (I made two others):

Observations

1. Wow, I was absolutely amazed at what students wrote and how much they wrote! It was like after bathing them in so much input for the past 8.5 weeks that it overflowed similar to turning on a faucet - it all finally came out!
2. Student examples from picture 1 (in Latin and English):
1. Puer Marcus. Puer Julius. (The boy Marcus. The boy Julius).
2. Puer est Marcus. Marcus est parvus. (The boy is Marcus. Marcus is small).
3. Marcus est parvus. Julius est magnus (Marcus is small. Julius is big).
4. Marcus est parvus puer, et Julius est magnus puer. (Marcus is a small boy, and Julius is a big boy).
5. Hic est puer. Ei nomen est Marcus. Marcus est parvus et laetus puer. Hic est magnus puer. Ei nomen est Julius, et is est laetus. (This is a boy. His name is Marcus. Marcus is a small and happy boy. This is a big boy. His name is Julius, and he is happy).
3. It was so weird to see the Theory of Ordered Development occurring in their output right before my eyes. A number of students left out the Latin word "is" when trying to write "the boy is big" and instead wrote "the boy big." Before, I would have been frustrated over this and would have blamed the students, but knowing now the Theory of Ordered Development, I was like "Yay, you're proceeding along EXACTLY as you should be!"
4. Grading on a novice-low writing rubric informed by ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines made it so much easier! Because I was not focusing on errors and performance but rather on "show me what you can do and where you fall on the proficiency continuum/spectrum," this freed me greatly!
5. Yes, there were spelling and grammar errors - LOTS of them! However, when grammar errors are the norm and expectation since these students are novice learners, I only marked those errors if they impeded my understanding of their messages (even me as the "sympathetic receptor") which lowered their placement on the rubric.
6. I was surprised by how many students used vocabulary which I had not been truly targeting yet or for which I had not yet held them accountable. However, I had been using these words but usually they were glossed for bellringers, reading passages, and listening. Somehow, these students had already acquired those words, and those words were inside of them ready to come out!

I plan to do more of these kinds of writings!