AP Lang: Dec. 14-18

In the last few weeks I have been promising the students that if they worked consistently and kept digging into their writing and reading, we’d be able to cruise into break easily. I pushed them pretty hard and my expectations were high, but...

We made it!

This week is dedicated solely to writing workshop. Students should be starting the week with rough drafts--they may be very rough drafts and that’s okay--and we will spend four days this week editing, revising, and talking about those drafts. These essays are research-based essays that ask the students to pull from multiple sources to create new arguments.  This week our revision will focus on:

• “Pruning” our essays: Which parts can be cut? Which parts need just a little trim?
  
• Effective punctuation: We’ll continue our work on learning punctuation “rules” and how to use them to our advantage. Here’s a quick exercise with dashes, semicolons, and colons for students who’d like extra practice.
  
• Layering examples: Which pieces of evidence work best together? How can we transition from one piece of evidence to the next so that we’re building arguments rather than listing facts?
  

By the end of the week, students should be almost ready to turn these essays in. They won’t be due until the Tuesday we return from break, but I’m happy to take them early.

Argument essays will be returned this week (hopefully Tuesday!). As with all writing assignments, please encourage your students to come see me and discuss my comments if they don’t understand what they need to do to improve. My comments are always intended to be instructive; if students don’t know what I want them to do, I want to clarify!!

Revisions and Second chances: Students who are taking the second chance opportunity for the rhetorical analysis essay should be working on those essays now as well. I am available before school everyday except Monday this week for extra help. There will not be a second chance for the argument essay, but since the synthesis essay is practicing the same skills as the argument essay, I will “count” the stronger grade of the two. Students should use their feedback on the argument essay to guide their writing with the synthesis essay.

Finally, the big New Year’s Reading Resolutions Party is on Wednesday! If you’d still like to sign up to contribute something, check the link here. We have lots of fun planned, but the most important thing is that students should walk away on Wednesday with a clear reading goal for the second semester. Please ask your students about their resolutions, and perhaps you could make some yourself!! I plan to send out an end of the week blog post this week to share some pictures of our party and some suggestions for supporting reading at home over the break and into the new year.

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