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Workshop Update

Next Wednesday is the due date for the first essays for the Sophomores Writers' Workshop. Students had to write three pieces. Two were WASL prep type - an expository and persusasive using the usual prompts. The third was an editorial on a topic of their choice. I'm interested to see how they turned out. I've seen bits of several and talked with all the students about them, but the final product I haven't seen on most of them.

Speaking of WASL, the writing prompts were weird. The expository one made one proctor cry and a couple of kids had to talk about what they wrote after because of the emotion it caused. The persusasive one was so close to ones that have already been released, I'm surprised that any student had even think. I'm pretty sure all my students wrote the same thing they've written in previous exercises.

Also, I'd like to send out a plea to the test creators... stop asking the students to "write a letter"! They aren't writing a letter. They're writing a 5 paragraph essay. In fact, they must write an essay with at least 5 paragraphs, an introduction paragraph and a conclusion paragraph. If they wrote an actual letter, they would fail this portion of the WASL. I think the only rease you can get away with it is due to the fact that students are no longer taught to write letters until their senior year of high school.

Comments

Dr Pezz said…
My students mentioned how similar the prompts were to previous years' tests as well. Odd.

The makers are running out of ideas so soon. I guess no rubric is used for the WASL writers. :)
9:47 PM
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