I want to talk about my junior final. Tiz, Jeff and I just concluded a short, three-week unit to finish up the semester. We wanted to end the year with an SEL based unit, so we exposed students to literature loosely based on the theme of self-love. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, students read and analyzed various poems and pieces of literature. They practiced annotating and discussing how these types of shorter works are created, so there was heavy emphasis on writer’s craft/literary devices during class lessons.
     I’m really happy with the writing they produced for the final, and I think that one reason the writing is decent is because of the process they were required to work through. Over the course of the last three weeks, students practiced this process several times. That helped. On the day of the final, students were introduced to two brand-new pieces of literature. Together we read through them; they had pencil in hand. Then, students had to quickly choose which piece of literature they were going to work through for their final writing piece. Once students chose which text they liked, they had about 6 minutes to annotate it by themselves. After that, each student had to find a peer, who chose the same piece of literature, and they discussed each other’s annotations/ideas. I think this is such a valuable step in the process; Tiz and I discussed how our best ideas often come from talking it out. After their talking time, they wrote. Once all the prewriting steps were completed, students had about an hour to write for the final.
      I’m now grading these writing pieces, and they’re not bad. Students are talking about the tone of literature and how that tone was created. I’ve found that students were mostly successful in articulating these in a clear and concise fashion. I’m happy. Really, I feel like I won just getting 16/17 year olds to write for an hour, not on SnapChat.