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I'm sad to say it, but Bill Watterson's Calvin has a routine for writing that wasn't that much different from the one I had as a high school freshman. Through reading and practice, I got better, and I hope to give you the benefits of my hard-won lessons to help you craft effective persuasive writing and speeches. Since the strategies I advocate have worked very well for me and many of my students, I believe you would do well to work hard to learn them.
To make sure that your current paper is better than the last one, please do the following:
1. In a new tab, please open the google doc containing your essay about the simulation (or pull out the hard copy of your quizzes) and in the other open this page. If you can't find it, just proceed to the second step.
2. Open a third tab with the 20 common problems in student writing. Hint... control-click the link!
3. In a fourth tab, please create a NEW google doc, title it thusly using this formula...
Your class (W4 or W8?), your last name, the name of the assignment
e.g. W1, Bilinski, Wisdom From Ancient Rebels
4. Share this new doc with rsmith@er9.org.
5. Go back to your old essay. One by one, click on every bit of highlighted text and read Smith's comments on the margin of the google.doc on your essay. Numbers correlate with the 20 common problems in student writing.
If you didn't receive comments, it is because you didn't submit an essay with me, it wasn't in a google.doc, or you lost it. If that's the case, you should carefully read the 20 Common Mistakes in Student Writing anyway and pick out the three problems you believe you need to work on the most.
6. In that new doc, identify the three biggest challenges you had in your last paper and turn them into a list of numbered goals in your own words, such as the following example:
Goal 1. I will cite the sources of my evidence using the 5Ws in the text correctly before quotes, without parentheses..
7. Type these goals in a new google.doc, where you will write your next essay. Select each goal in turn, making the first red, the second purple and the third blue.
Please color the text, don't highlight it! Why? If you take black text and frame it in purple, this is what you get. See how that's nearly illegible? You want a good mark, don't you? Of course you do. Then please don't prejudice me against your essay by proving that you can't follow basic directions.
STOP here! Proceed no further until we have studied all the Roman rebels.
8. As you write a new essay, color the text all areas in your NEW paper where you prove that you accomplished the goal.
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