Of primary importance to English Language Arts teachers was the shift to a new essay format which favored analytic writing over opinion-based writing...
RESEARCH QUESTION
How do teachers adequately prepare students to skillfully write the redesigned SAT essay which focuses on analyzing an author’s purpose and technique across a wide variety of written genres? The answer to this is complex and multifaceted, but requires teachers to not only expose students to many different forms of writing, but to engage them in process writing that helps them step into the role of the author and analyze their own writing and their peers' writings as well.
CONCEPTUAL PLAN
Teachers should build students’ strengths in writing from freshman year to junior year (the year of the SAT) by exposing them to multiple writing prompts (narrative writing, persuasive, literary analysis, and poetry explication) and having them practice the skill of written reflection on their own writing and the writing of their peers. The SAT essay contains many elements of analyzing an author’s style and technique, so building a skill set the helps students write the essay confidently will be most important.
Primarily, this project will focus on a singular unit: narrative writing, and how practicing the skills necessary for writing the SAT essay can be effectively blended into an already existing unit. In addition, the discussion of the several sections of the unit will highlight ways that each segment of the process can be connected to the SAT essay as well. Finally, the concluding section will include my reflections on how effective this series of lessons were in a sample classroom.
RESEARCH QUESTION
How do teachers adequately prepare students to skillfully write the redesigned SAT essay which focuses on analyzing an author’s purpose and technique across a wide variety of written genres? The answer to this is complex and multifaceted, but requires teachers to not only expose students to many different forms of writing, but to engage them in process writing that helps them step into the role of the author and analyze their own writing and their peers' writings as well.
CONCEPTUAL PLAN
Teachers should build students’ strengths in writing from freshman year to junior year (the year of the SAT) by exposing them to multiple writing prompts (narrative writing, persuasive, literary analysis, and poetry explication) and having them practice the skill of written reflection on their own writing and the writing of their peers. The SAT essay contains many elements of analyzing an author’s style and technique, so building a skill set the helps students write the essay confidently will be most important.
Primarily, this project will focus on a singular unit: narrative writing, and how practicing the skills necessary for writing the SAT essay can be effectively blended into an already existing unit. In addition, the discussion of the several sections of the unit will highlight ways that each segment of the process can be connected to the SAT essay as well. Finally, the concluding section will include my reflections on how effective this series of lessons were in a sample classroom.