February 20, 2007

Homework:
Begin the review units between units 9 and 10.
If you can, work on your "Monsters" essay.
Practice for the reading on Thursday.

Today we read over three essays. The first two were "Monsters" essays that scored six according to GoMyAccess. The last one was an essay that scored a five. The girl who wrote the five essay wanted to know why she could not get a six. I agreed with her. I wanted to know as well. I think this is a common problem with students when they are trying to improve their scores on GoMyAccess. They think that their spelling errors are what is holding them down. What we found was the essay had a bigger problem.

The prompt stated that the essay needed to explain Figure One's statement and give an opinion on the technique. The first two essays took the time to thoroughly explain what Figure One meant. They explained the technique and gave examples from the story. Then, both essays gave an opinion on the efficacy of the technique. One girl thought the technique was terrible and could not see it working for real. The main problem with the five essay was organization. She did not have the three main parts that I suggested in the outline.

The suggestions we finally came up with, I hope, should improve the five essay. I look forward to seeing the improvement. I also look forward to the rest of the classes. Now that they have something to shoot for, I think many will improve their scores. We will be able to get one more day in the writing lab since I missed last week during the storm.