In-class essay #1
| High Standard (10 points) |
At Standard (8 points) |
Below Standard (6 points) |
| Excellent start on your essay. You’re working toward a clear thesis about the humanities text(s) and you’ve used specific evidence from the text to support your interpretation. Of course, you’ll be doing more work on organization, but the essay is easy to follow right now. | You’re working toward a thesis about the humanities text(s) although you need to really focus and clarify it for the first draft. You need to bring in more specific elements from the text to support your interpretation. Need work with organization – some rearranging and paragraph breaks. Might be one or two troubling grammar patterns you need to address. | No sense of focus or purpose to the essay. Or the focus strays completely away from the humanities text (art, film, lit). Very little or no support from the elements of the texts. Interpretation may depend on vague generalizations or stray away from the text altogether. Grammar issues make it hard to understand. Needs a lot of work with organization – no paragraph breaks or very confusing order. |
If you didn’t do well, you need to prepare more effectively for the next in-class essay. You should:
Decide ahead of time which text(s) you’ll be writing on and what you want to say about it (them).
Print off a copy of the art piece, noting the artist’s name, title and date.
If you are writing on a poem, bring your dialogue journal entry
If you are writing on a story, bring your book with key quotes and parts of the story underlined and your notes on the story
If you are writing on the film, watch the film again before the in-class and take notes on key scenes and details of the film that you’ll use as evidence