Writing Response

Good Morning!

We'll be reading, as usual.


Goal #1: Revision
While some of you may have gotten good advice from some of your peers yesterday, we need to take a step back and work in smaller steps.

Today, you will work with partners. You should all be with new people. With these partners:

1. One person will read their personal statement to their partner.
2. The listener identifies at least one piece of praise, one question, and one wish about the reader's personal statement.
3. Trade roles.
4. After this process, I will give you all a copy of the rubric. Identify where your partner falls in each category on the rubric, and give some suggestions for how your partner could improve their score. I would recommend trading computers so that you don't have to worry about sharing it with them. 

Goal #2: Reflection 

When you return to your seats, after you've put your netbooks away, I have a small piece of reflective writing to ask of you. I will give you paper.

1. What worked well and what didn't work well in today's process of peer editing (being assigned a partner, reading, sharing suggestions, looking at the rubric)
2. What is working/not working in your personal statement?
3. What is your plan for fixing/improving upon those issues?

Time to Draft

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"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."

- Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

Do you feel like we don't do enough writing?

I feel like we don't do enough writing.

Today you will be working on the first draft of your essay.
Writing involves many drafts, especially when they are about personal experiences.
You will need to have your first draft written in your Writer's Notebook on Monday, which means that you'll need to do as much writing as you can today, and know that you may have to do some extra writing this weekend.

The document below gives you options for your personal statements.

Personal Statement Prompts

Please make sure to label your draft with your essay prompt and, if applicable, the college it applies to.

There are two ways to go about this:

Option 1: Just start writing. Forget about structure and organization because you can figure that out later. Writer's that choose this option should feel ready to write. They should know which essay they want to write and have a good idea what they want to present in their essays.

Option 2: Take some time to sketch out your paper using a planning chart like the in the Personal Statement Prompts file. It may be a good idea to choose a couple prompts and try out different approaches and/or subjects. Draw on what you read this week and have written over the past few weeks. Use this to draw out your sense of purpose for your essay. Then move on to writing.