If I see the student lost points for the thesis statement, I expect to see a newly revised thesis statement, and it should be highlighted. I also look at the original rubric and where I deducted points. The way I do this is I place the two essays (the original and the newly revised copy) side-by-side, and I begin to compare them. Having a highlighted/tracked copy of the essay will help you assess the effort of revision. The key to making this resubmission process a success is to enforce that students highlight all changes and/or use track changes. The sound of assessing student essays a second time can seem quite daunting. I assess essay resubmissions for effort of revisions. If you fail to turn in the original essay and rubric with the resubmission, you will receive no extra points, and your initial score will stand.Ĥ. You must turn in the initial essay and rubric (with teacher comments and annotations) along with the essay resubmission. If you choose to rewrite the entire essay, please write a note to the teacher explaining why you started over and attach this note to your essay resubmission.ĪLL changes to the essay MUST be either highlighted or annotated with Track Changes on Microsoft Word. The essay must account for all points lost, and this might involve substantially rewriting portions of the essay, or completely rewriting the entire essay. Simply editing the essay for grammar will not qualify the essay for points back. In order to receive the MAXIMUM points back, students must follow the resubmission guidelines as follows:Īny targeted writing skill where the essay lost points on the rubric must be addressed through revision/editing/rewriting. This means that the essay may still contain mistakes or may still need further revision and editing, but the student will still receive credit for making an honest attempt to improve the essay. When I eventually assess the essay a second time, I will grade it for the amount of effort the student put into making changes. It's important to note that students do not just receive points back automatically. In schools where I've had less students, I was able to require tutorials for students who scored less than an 85, but with my current number of students in a school without a writing center, I only have enough time to schedule tutorials for students who scored below a 70. You can alter these particular resubmission requirements as best fits your group of students. If you scored a 70 or lower, an essay resubmission is mandatory and a tutorial or visit to the writing center is required.įailure to comply with these guidelines will result in NO CHANGE to the initial score, and parents will be notified about the failure to raise the score. If you scored a 71-80, an essay resubmission is mandatory but a tutorial is optional. If you scored a 81-100 or higher, an essay resubmission is optional but encouraged. Here are the resubmission guidelines I give my students: This resubmission is not mandatory for all students but is mandatory for some students. If a student scored a 99 or 100 on the essay, the student has the potential to earn bonus points on the essay grade. If a student scored a 90 on the first submission, that student has the potential to earn up to a 95 on the essay, and so on. This means that if a student initially scored a 70 on the essay, he/she has the potential to earn a maximum score of an 85 on the essay. Students turn in a "final" draft of an essay on a specified due date.Īt this point, students are instructed to revise/edit/rewrite their essays by an assigned date (usually two weeks later) in order to receive HALF THE POINTS BACK TO 100. This system has also helped to motivate my students to revise their writing and focus on learning rather than just making a grade. grading system (based on a numerical scale out of 100) while simultaneously reflecting writing as a process. I don't necessarily have the one single answer to this question, but I have developed an essay grading philosophy that marries the reality of the U.S. So the question is- how do we assess writing as a process? How do we grade an essay on a scale of 0-100 while simultaneously allowing "room" for the writing to grow and change? However, this grading system is antithetical to the very nature of writing which is never finished and never perfect. Our very grading system forces us to assign numbered grades to writing, which assumes that a final product can be both finished and also perfect. I often feel this way whenever I read back over my own old essays and inevitably find a sentence that could be better, a paragraph that could be stronger, or a word that could be more precise. No piece of writing is ever "final." Something can always be better.
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