This week you wrote an informative piece about how your relationship with a subject changed. Now you’ll read another student’s piece and judge how strong it is. Working through how assessors evaluate informative writing about personal experience sharpens your ability to apply the same lens to your own work.
Part 1
The Assessor Scorecard for
Informative – Informative piece
Informative writing about personal experience explains ideas to help readers understand. Strong pieces use precise language and specific examples to make abstract ideas like ‘losing interest’ real and concrete.
Ideas & Content
Informative writing about personal experience is only as strong as the insights it reveals.
Weak responses list events without explaining what changed or why.
Strong responses show the before and after, name the specific change, and reflect on what it reveals about how learning works.
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Specific change: shows what shifted, why it shifted and what the writer understood.
Structure & Cohesion
Readers need to follow the journey from before to after.
Weak responses jump between time periods or bury the key insight.
Strong ones move logically — ‘at first I thought’, ‘then something changed’, ‘now I understand’ — or from problem, to what helped, to what was learned.
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Journey sequence: guides readers from the before state through cause to after.
Audience & Purpose
Your reader is a teacher wanting to understand what genuinely shapes a student’s relationship with a subject.
This is not a journal or entertainment.
Strong responses select details that matter to the explanation and anticipate what the teacher wants to understand — not just what changed, but why and what it reveals.
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Teacher insight: selects details that help the reader understand how interest develops.
Language Choices
Precise language helps readers understand internal change — shifts in thinking, not just external events.
Vague phrases like ‘it was boring’ do not help.
Strong responses use concrete details and language that names thinking: ‘I realised’, ‘I began to’, ‘I discovered’.
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Internal language: names shifts in thinking rather than only outside events.
Conventions
Accuracy in spelling, punctuation and sentence construction matters because errors interrupt understanding of the internal experience.
Stronger responses keep control so readers stay with the change.
Conventions also include consistent tense and complete sentences that express complex internal states clearly.
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Tense control: keeps the personal change clear and easy to follow.
Part 2
Today’s Marking Targets
Task in one sentence
Write an informative piece for a teacher explaining how your relationship with a subject changed, what caused the shift, and what it taught you about how interest and ability develop.
Let’s Focus
Three strands matter most this week: Language Choices, Structure & Cohesion and Ideas & Content. Language Choices decides whether internal change becomes visible on the page. Structure & Cohesion decides whether the reader can trace cause and effect from before to after. Ideas & Content decides whether the details you select actually explain what changed.
Language Choices
Assessors reward precise language that names internal change. That means words showing thinking — ‘I realised’, ‘I discovered’, ‘my understanding shifted’ — not vague phrases. Concrete details (‘she asked me to explain my thinking first’) beat generalisations (‘my teacher helped me’). Specific emotional states make the experience real.
What markers scan for
- Precise language naming internal change — ‘I realised’, ‘I discovered’, ‘my understanding shifted’.
- Concrete details and emotional language that make the experience specific, not generalised.
- Words that show thinking rather than simply report events.
Score Bands
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Basic
Language is vague; the reader does not understand the specific nature of the change or what it felt like.
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Strong
Language is mostly precise; words that name thinking and internal states appear; concrete details make the experience more real.
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Excellent
Language is consistently precise; internal change is named clearly; concrete details and emotional language make the experience vivid.
Structure & Cohesion
Assessors reward responses that guide readers logically through the change. A strong structure names the subject and ‘before’ state, describes the moment or process of change, explains what caused it, describes the ‘after’, then reflects on what it reveals about learning. Cause and effect must be visible.
What markers scan for
- A clear sequence moving through the change — before, during, after — or through cause and effect.
- Time markers and transitions — ‘at first’, ‘then’, ‘what helped’, ‘now I understand’ — that guide readers.
- A visible link between what changed and what caused it.
Score Bands
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Basic
The sequence is unclear or jumbled; readers struggle to follow the progression from before to after.
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Strong
The sequence is mostly clear; time markers and transitions help readers follow the change.
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Excellent
The sequence is clear and purposeful; transitions and structure make the progression easy to follow.
Ideas & Content
Assessors reward responses that explain not just what changed but why, and what that reveals about learning. Weak responses describe events without connecting them to insight. Strong responses select details that matter and link them to the key insight — the realisation that the teacher expected thinking, not memorisation, for example.
What markers scan for
- Selection of details that actually explain the change, not just describe events.
- Clear naming of what changed — understanding, interest, confidence — and what caused it.
- Reflection that connects personal experience to a broader insight about learning.
Score Bands
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Basic
The response describes events but does not explain what changed or why; readers do not understand the cause of the shift.
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Strong
The response names what changed and identifies causes; most details support the explanation.
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Excellent
The response explains what changed, why, and what this reveals about how learning works; every detail serves the explanation.
Now read · Student sample
How My Relationship with a Subject Changed
Year 9 sample · \~300 words
Student sample for assessment
Written by a Year 9 student in Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia.
I used to hate mathematics because I thought it was pointless. In year seven, I saw maths as just a bunch of rules to memorise and apply to problems that had nothing to do with real life. I was okay at following procedures, but I did not understand why any of it mattered. I got okay marks, but I was not interested. Mathematics was just something I had to do. Then in year eight, something changed. My teacher, Mrs K, started asking us different kinds of questions. Instead of 'solve this equation', she asked 'what equation would you need to solve to find the answer to this problem?' This meant I actually had to understand what the problem was asking, not just follow steps. At first, this frustrated me because I was not used to thinking that way. But Mrs K would not let us just guess. She would ask 'why do you think that?' and we would have to explain our thinking. Slowly, I began to see that mathematics was not about memorising rules. It was about solving problems in a logical way. When I understood that, things started to make sense. I began to see patterns. I started to feel like maybe I could figure things out, not just copy steps. What caused this change was that my teacher helped me see the purpose behind the mathematics, not just the procedures. She showed me that maths was a tool for thinking, not a set of meaningless rules. This has taught me something important about learning. It is not really about whether something is hard or easy. It is about whether you understand why it matters. I thought I did not like mathematics, but really I did not like feeling confused and powerless. When I understood the purpose, I liked it. This applies to other subjects too. Interest is not just something you have or do not have. It develops when you understand what something is for.
