Quill currently has 16 different assessments (Quill Diagnostics/Writing Skills Surveys) you can assign to assess your students' writing skills. When your students complete any one of these assessments, Quill will create a plan of practice recommendation activities based on your student's performance on the Quill Diagnostic/Writing Skills Survey.
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What is a Quill Diagnostic/Writing Skills Survey?
Quill currently has 16 different assessments (Quill Diagnostics/Writing Skills Surveys) you can assign to assess your students' writing skills.
Of the available Quill Diagnostics, there are Baseline Diagnostics and Growth Diagnostics.
A Baseline Diagnostic is a pre-test and is intended to initially assess a student's writing skills so that Quill can create a plan of practice recommendation activities based on the student's performance on the Baseline Diagnostic.
A Growth Diagnostic is a post-test and is intended to subsequently assess a student's writing skills after they have already completed the corresponding Baseline Diagnostic and the practice recommendation activities associated with the Baseline Diagnostic. After a student completes a Growth Diagnostic, Quill will create a plan of practice recommendation activities based on the student's performance on the Growth Diagnostic.
The Writing Skills Surveys, developed in partnership with CollegeBoard®, are aligned with the CollegeBoard’s Pre-AP®, AP®, and SpringBoard® curricula and can be used in lieu of Quill Diagnostics for students learning one of these curricula.
What are the writing skills assessed by each Quill Diagnostic/Writing Skills Survey?
Our Quill Diagnostics/Writing Skills Surveys assess students' writing skill proficiencies. On the page to choose the Quill Diagnostic/Writing Skills Survey that you would like to assign, look at the What section to see the writing skills that a Quill Diagnostic/Writing Skills Survey assesses.
Please see more information about the writing skills assessed by each Quill Diagnostic/Writing Skills Survey below.
Starter Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who were they designed for?
Middle or high school students who need a refresher in the basics
Middle or high school students who are new to Quill or new to sentence combining
Elementary school students who are learning the basics for the first time
What skills do they cover?
Possessive nouns
Plural nouns
Plural Possessive nouns
Capitalization
Subject-verb agreement
Subject and object pronouns
Commonly confused words: your vs. you’re, there vs. their vs. they’re
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 24 questions. The Starter Diagnostic (Baseline Pre) and Starter Diagnostic (Growth Post) should take students about 30-40 minutes to complete.
Intermediate Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Upper elementary, middle, or high school students who have completed the starter diagnostic and the recommended follow-up practice
Middle or high school students who have mastered the basics (like adjectives, subject-verb agreement, and capitalization) and are ready to work on constructing sentences to express relationships
What skills does it cover?
Compound subjects, objects, and predicates
Simple appositive phrases
Compound sentences
Complex sentences
Compound-complex sentences
Conjunctive adverbs
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 23 questions. The Intermediate Diagnostic (Baseline Pre) and Intermediate Diagnostic (Growth Post) should take students about 30-40 minutes to complete.
Advanced Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Students who have completed the intermediate diagnostic and the recommended follow-up practice
Students who are familiar with sentence combining
Students who have mastered basic sentence construction, like writing compound and complex sentences
What skills does it cover?
Relative clauses
Appositive phrases
Participial phrases
Parallel structures
Open sentence combining
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 13 questions. The Advanced Diagnostic (Baseline Pre) and Advanced Diagnostic (Growth Post) should take students about 20-40 minutes to complete.
ELL Starter Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Newcomer and beginner English learners
Directions are available in Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Tagalog (Filipino), Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dari (Eastern Farsi), Arabic, and Hindi to provide extra support; however, the ELL Starter Diagnostics are appropriate for ELL students who speak any language.
What skills does it cover?
Articles
Plurals
Possessives
Pronouns
Adjectives & adverbs
Prepositions
Negation
Questions
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 13 questions. The ELL Starter Diagnostic (Baseline Pre) and ELL Starter Diagnostic (Growth Post) should take students about 20-40 minutes to complete.
ELL Intermediate Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
ELL students who have an understanding of simple sentence structure but need practice with tenses, prepositions, and other foundational grammar skills.
Directions are available in Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Tagalog (Filipino), Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dari (Eastern Farsi), Arabic, and Hindi to provide extra support; however, the ELL Intermediate Diagnostics are appropriate for ELL students who speak any language.
What skills does it cover?
This diagnostic is more difficult than the ELL Starter Diagnostic and covers the skills that tend to be particularly challenging for language learners:
Subject-verb agreement
Possessives
Prepositions
Future Tense
Articles
Intermediate Questions
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 23 questions. The ELL Intermediate Diagnostic (Baseline Pre) and Intermediate Diagnostic (Growth Post) should take students about 20-35 minutes to complete.
ELL Advanced Baseline and Growth Diagnostics
Who was it designed for?
Upper-intermediate and advanced English learners
Directions are available in Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Urdu, Tagalog (Filipino), Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dari (Eastern Farsi), Arabic, and Hindi to provide extra support; however, the ELL Advanced Diagnostics are appropriate for ELL students who speak any language.
What skills does it cover?
Challenging articles (a vs. an vs. one vs. the vs. zero article)
Countable vs. uncountable nouns
Subject, object, possessive, and reflexive pronouns
Commonly confused words, like say vs. tell vs. talk vs. ask & more vs. most vs. many vs. much
Forming sentences starting with there is / there are
Gerunds vs. infinitives
ed vs. -ing adjectives
Embedded questions
Responding to questions
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 19 questions. The ELL Advanced Diagnostic (Baseline Pre) and ELL Advanced Diagnostic (Growth Post) should take students about 20-40 minutes to complete.
SpringBoard® Writing Skills Survey
Who was it designed for?
Students who are learning the SpringBoard® 6-8 curriculum.
Please note that you may want ELL students who are learning the Pre-AP®, AP®, or SpringBoard® curricula to complete an ELL Diagnostic.
What skills does it cover?
Subject-verb agreement
Pronoun-antecedent agreement
Compound subjects, objects, and predicates
Compound sentences
Complex sentences
Prepositional phrases
Verb tense
Subject and object pronouns
Commonly confused words
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 25 questions. The SpringBoard® Writing Skills Survey should take students about 20-35 minutes to complete.
Which Quill Diagnostic is the SpringBoard® Writing Skills Survey similar to?
The SpringBoard® Writing Skills Survey overlaps the most with the Intermediate Diagnostics in terms of assessed writing skills covered and associated practice recommendation activities) and also overlaps with the Starter Diagnostics.
Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 1
Who was it designed for?
Students in Pre-AP® English 1, Pre-AP® English 2, and SpringBoard® 9-1- curriculum.
Please note that you may want ELL students who are learning the Pre-AP®, AP®, or SpringBoard® curricula to complete an ELL Diagnostic.
Please note that we recommend that you assign the Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 1 before the Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 2.
What skills does it cover?
Subject-verb agreement
Pronoun-antecedent agreement
Compound subjects, objects, and predicates
Compound sentences
Complex sentences
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 12 questions. The Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 1 should take students about 10-20 minutes to complete.
Which Quill Diagnostic is the Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 1 similar to?
The Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 1 has the most overlap with the Intermediate Diagnostics in terms of assessed writing skills covered and associated practice recommendation activities.
Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 2
Who was it designed for?
Students in Pre-AP® English 1, Pre-AP® English 2, and SpringBoard® 9-11 curriculum who have completed the Pre-AP® Writing Survey 1 and all of its associated practice recommendation activities.
Please note that you may want ELL students who are learning the Pre-AP®, AP®, or SpringBoard® curricula to complete an ELL Diagnostic.
What skills does it cover?
Conjunctive adverbs
Relative clauses
Appositive phrases
Participial phrases
Parallel structure
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 12 questions. The Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 2 should take students about 10-20 minutes to complete.
Which Quill Diagnostic is the Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 2 similar to?
The Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 2 has the most overlap with the Advanced Diagnostics in terms of assessed writing skills covered and associated practice recommendation activities.
AP® Writing Skills Survey
What skills does it cover?
Complex sentences
Relative clauses
Appositive phrases
Participial phrases
Compound-complex sentences
Parallel structure
Advanced sentence combining
Who was it designed for?
Students learning any AP® curriculum and SpringBoard® 11-12 curriculum.
Students who have completed the Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 1, the Pre-AP® Writing Skills Survey 2, and the associated practice recommendation activities.
Please note that you may want ELL students who are learning the Pre-AP®, AP®, or SpringBoard® curricula to complete an ELL Diagnostic.
How many questions are there and how long will it take students to complete?
There are 17 questions. The AP® Writing Skills Survey should take students about 15-25 minutes to complete.
Which Quill Diagnostic is the AP® Writing Skills Survey similar to?
The AP® Writing Skills Survey has the most overlap with the Advanced Diagnostics in terms of assessed writing skills covered and associated practice recommendation activities.
AP®, Pre-AP®, and SpringBoard® are registered trademarks of College Board.
How do I assign a Quill Diagnostic/Writing Skills Survey?
Please click here to learn how to assign a Quill Diagnostic/Writing Skills Survey.
Have more questions?
Please feel free to send a message to the Quill team using the green message bubble on the bottom right corner of the screen or email us at support@quill.org.