Term two extra credit:
The example that I will choose to show
improvement due to formative assessment is my Nationalism essay. I got this
feedback from one of the teachers in the history, which was extremely helpful.
I completed 3 drafts after I received this help from the teacher in the history
lab. She was very helpful as she did not only edit my paper but also spoke to
me to explain what she was doing and giving me tips on how to do it myself.
This was great because it was much easier to go back home and edit twice more
with the tips the teacher gave me. The most common types of feedback that I
received where mostly grammatical mistakes that made it difficult to understand
my big idea. This would then lead to another common edit that I needed to make
which was to explain with more analysis how my ideas connect to my big idea.
How I corrected all these problems was to go back and proofread my paper first
for grammatical errors and then go over it once more to add more specific
analysis. Proofreading was really the main thing that I needed to do in order
to improve my writing. This leads to the conclusion that the way I will prevent
these mistakes is to proofread a little better because as I could tell, made a
gigantic difference. I spoke about one of the leaders that did not listen to
anything the people said but I didn’t tie it back. But the history teacher
helped me and told me to add analysis, so I did. “The people wanted a quick change
and wanted to make a mark that accurately portrays their oppression as to be
seen as a catapult induce change”. Formative assessment really helped me.
Peter Hereu
Tiffany Cai
ReplyDeleteJanuary 23rd 2012
Purple Block
Term 2 Extra Credit
One of the writing assignments that we completed this term that involved formative assessment was the Imperialism Essay. In that essay, I had four drafts, the first draft, the second draft edited by my peers during the writing workshop, the revision paragraph edited by Ms. Shapero, and the final draft. I received feedback from Ms. Shapero, my peers both in and out of class, and the teachers at the writing lab. The most common types of feedback I received were that I had to be more specific and concrete in my writing in general, as well as doing a better job connecting my analysis back to my argument. I also needed to make a stronger argument for my thesis and I needed to reinforce my evidence in several body paragraphs as well as a stronger conclusion. I addressed that feedback by going back into my work and making sure, I included the changes in my following drafts. I plan to make a list of common errors I made during my last few writing assignments, so I will remember not to make the same mistakes in order to prevent similar mistakes in my future writing. I will also constantly reread my drafts and to revise it sentence by sentence to avoid any careless mistakes. In my first draft, my thesis was, "Due to their sense of inherent superiority, the imperial powers believed it was acceptable to alter traditional practices in order to become the leading world power, which meant securing the most land, economic gain, and controlling the most resources and people,". To be quite honest, my first draft of my thesis was a mess because I had no idea what I was writing and I don't think I even had a clear opinion on what extent the imperial powers were justified. However, in my final draft, I took the advice from my peers to make my thesis more specific, to reword it, and to actually think every sentence through which created a stronger and clear argument in the end. My final thesis was, "While European imperialists were oblivious to the fact that they were inflicting harm, they were not justified in their altering of tradition of the conquered people to the extent that they created irreversible damage to an already afflicted environment". By the time, I had finished the second draft of my thesis I actually had a clear idea of what I was going to do next. Formative assessment helped me revise my thesis statement by helping me be less vague and more specific.
Extra Credit Assignment: Term 2....By Julia Maney
ReplyDeleteIn the Imperialism essay I submitted, I completed a total of two drafts for my entire essay, two drafts for one of my body paragraphs, and two drafts for my outline. I received feedback on my body paragraph and outline from a peer editor and I was given feedback on my entire essay from my parents. The most common feedback that I received was to shorten my quotations so I was not overpowering my essay with quotes. I was also told to clarify my thoughts by using the correct word choice so that my analysis would be stronger. In my later drafts I addressed these points of advice by taking out specific words or sentences and rewriting them so that they were more precise and to the point. I also shortened my quotations so they were not as lengthy. To prevent these same mistakes in my writing in the future I will tell my peer editor to scrutinize those areas in my writing when they are editing. I will also remind myself when I am editing my own paper to make sure my thoughts are understandable and evident to the reader. An example of improvement I made in this essay was when I simply isolated part of a longer quote that was included in one of my body paragraphs. By doing this I could rewrite some of my analysis of that quote so that my argument was much clearer and strong. Without the formative assessment and editing from my peers, I wouldn’t have changed that part of my writing to make it better.