Writing WrAP-Up

This week's blogging assignment is really an essay, and will be worth 60 points.  There is only one post due, and this assignment replaces your outside reading for the week.  This essay-post will draw on skills we've been developing over the course of the year and should reflect growing independence in your ability to interpret and manage a writing assignment.  You are getting a week to work on this with limited other assignments for a reason - use it well.

Before you write:
- Review your WrAP test and score, looking closely at the rubric and finding specific examples of positive or negative issues in each rubric area (you will need to turn WrAP back in to me, so don't lose it)
- Review all of your essays submitted through turnitin.com and the comments you received.  If you got any essay comments back from me through email and can't find them, I can resend if needed.
- Review the rubrics for the essays along with your comments and reflection - did your assessment on this rubric agree with mine?  Where were they most the same or most different?
- Compile all of this information in notes in some useful way.  For example, you may look at strengths and weaknesses across essays, or you may look at each characteristic of good writing across essays, or you may divide the essays into categories in some way that makes sense to you.  You are interested in both high-level issues (like ideas and organization) and lower-level issues (like sentence fluency, word choice, and conventions), so don't leave anything out.
- Once you have compiled your notes, look for patterns.  What similarities do you see across these essays?  What differences are there?  Is there a progression?  What conclusions can you draw about your writing this year based on that feedback?
- Do you have questions about what a particular comment means?  Make sure to ask me by Thursday or Friday of this week - I won't be able to answer questions by email over the weekend.  Not knowing what I meant by something is no excuse for not including it or responding to it.

Writing:

Write an essay that includes an introduction, body and conclusion, in which you:

• summarize, synthesize, and analyze all the feedback you have received on your writing this year, both from me and from your WrAP test.  What conclusions can you draw about your writing this year based on that feedback?  (tip: this section should probably be more than one paragraph long)
• This section should make and support an overall claim about your writing based on the evidence of the feedback you've received.  That claim should not be something like, "My writing is pretty good."  Think more like: "My essays since the beginning of the year have improved in ideas, organization, and conventions, but I still need to work on interpreting rhetorical situations and using standard conventions to document research sources."

• respond to the feedback you have received on your writing. Does that feedback match your understanding of your writing work this year?  In what areas of writing does it match or not?  Has the way you evaluate your writing changed over the course of the year?
• set specific, attainable goals for improving your writing over the next year, based in the feedback you received and your response to it, and develop a plan for reaching those goals.

The essay is worth 50 points, and will be evaluated based on how well you respond to the rhetorical situation through the traits of good writing.

Finally, compile your conventions marks and corrections into an updated "Common Errors List," which should be five to ten items long and include an example for each item.  Your list length should reflect the variety of errors that you make - don't just stop at five because you've reached the minimum.  Again, make sure to review your essays and ask me any questions this week.  You may place the list at the end of your essay or post it separately.  The common errors list is worth 10 points.

Revision, editing, general notes:

• You will probably want to write this in a word processing program for better spelling and grammar checking, and then copy and paste into your blog.
• I am asking you to do a lot of specific things here, but I still want to see (appropriate) voice and personality in your writing.  Think about engaging ways that you could present this.  Remember the questions are guides to help you think about what to write.  Your essay should be more than answering those questions.
• Before posting, make sure to reread the assignment to be certain you've addressed everything.  Will someone reading this learn something about you as a writer?  Will someone reading this know that you have learned something about yourself as a writer?
• Edit your essay carefully.
• Because this assignment is a reflective essay itself, I'm not asking you for a separate process reflection.  This essay is a giant, year-long process reflection.