I contributed this haiku to the Day in a Sentence series, which is now hosted by Kevin at Kevin’s Meandering Mind.
We’re writing away.
SOLs are coming up.
Oh, to know the prompt.
And yes, we are writing. My eleventh-graders will be taking the writing portions of their end-of-course SOL tests the first week of March, and that’s all we’ve been focusing on so far. First, I had them take last year’s released multiple-choice test, which has questions about the writing process. Then, I walked them through writing an essay step-by-step, from analyzing a prompt to four parts of prewriting to publishing a final draft.
This past week, we discussed the Writing Domains, which detail the way in which their prompt-inspired essay will be graded, and they will be taking a test on the domains this week. I will be passing back their essays this week and using a rules-based correction method with them. (I’ll go into further detail on this method soon.)
There’s always so much to do and so little time in which to do it all. Of course, they’re really being tested on what they’ve learned since their last writing SOLs, in eighth grade, but we all know that their scores will reflect on me, regardless. ;)
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Most of my teaching resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, which means you can feel free to use them with attribution as long as you don’t use them commercially. If you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to ask me. Unfortunately, I am currently unable to send out my tests and quizzes, but I am hoping to establish a less time-consuming alternative for this in the near future. Sorry!!
