AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students 1) analyzed a writer’s rhetorical strategies, and 2) reviewed strategies for timed-writing revisions.
Period 5, we returned to Sarah Vowell today because we didn’t get to talk about her piece last week enough for me to be satisfied. As you observed, there are plenty of schemes and tropes that live on the surface of “Shooting Dad”, and you did a capable job of going beneath the surface and rooting around for meaning.
We talked about forthcoming outside writing assignments, and then we reviewed some important ideas for revision of your timed writings. Among them:
- Write to the prompt. Your identification of persona, context, audience, and argument will help you craft your thesis.
- Craft at least three solid body paragraphs; this will give you practice identifying accurate information, and analyzing and evaluaing it.
- Cover sheets must be as thoroughly thought through as your revision.
While last week I was impressed with revision conference preparations, this week is a different matter. I’m seeing that students 1) aren’t using the rubric to understand their inital scores, 2) aren’t highlighting their papers to see where their critical thinking is sufficient and where it’s lacking, and 3) aren’t prepared to answer the questions about improvement.
I made clear earlier in the year that to revise any in-class essay, students must participate in a revision conference with me. And to properly prepare for and participate in a revision conference, students must use the “AP Open Essay Rubric and Its Connection to Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy” handout and “Preparing for a Revision Conference” protocol, and, as always, students must be practicing the homework protocol as described in “How to Do Homework When You Have No Specific Assignment”. The latter will inform your understanding of how to use the former two.
Look for an updated version of the “Preparing for a Revision Conference” protocol with some new, helpful instructions.