To improve these assessments, I will need to formalize which grammatical concepts should be taught and in what order in the aid to improving student writing. This is kind of subjective, in that I have an idea as to which concepts are required of that level, but I also want to be able to nimbly jump around to whichever ones students display a lack of skill in. So, they can vary from year-to-year and class-to-class.
I also want to do a better job of using more samples of student writing; while I do use at least 1 or 2 for writing throughout the trimester, I need to do more of them on the whole. I want to use them for more activities, especially in small-groups, and more interactively. For example: the plan, as of now, is to load the sample student essays (without my comments, when possible) onto ibooks, the Kno App, which is what our textbooks will be on, or a googledoc that they can all edit (I'm leaning in this direction, currently). Their group will be responsible for peer-reviewing / editing specific portions / pages of the document, which will show up on the projector as they do it. Then, we'll review the essay and their comments together, decide on a score form the AP scale, and then compare that to the grade I gave them (or the grade the AP reader gave the essay in the case of the AP essays from the books they give us). This will be helpful, interactive, and informational as far as what I expect and the AP board expects from a synthesis essay. To go along with this, I want to make a checklist out of the AP writing rubric that they can use for each sample essay to help them determine the score. This will make it easier to identify the qualities they think it displays in a more digestible form than its current "written-as-paragraph" state.
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