Writing Prompts

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This chapter dissected the importance of essay questions as well as how teachers can use them effectively. Essay questions are an important tool that allow students to more freely depict what they have learned in class. I think the most important part of the chapter is on page 231 within the do and don’t list of writing prompts. I have seen so many prompts in college that come from the “do not prepare” part and those were the essays that I struggled with the most. I think a great aspect of the “do prepare” list is ensuring that the topics are interesting or relevant to the students. Even when preparing small prompts for a writing warm up exercise students would be able to create better responses given that they enjoy their topic. The chapter also showed many things that qualify an essay to be “good” or “great” through rubrics and lists. Students should be able to see what constitutes as good and or bad so that they can …show more content…

One thing that I have learned is that the times that I grade influence the amount of “steam” I have. Having a clear rubric will always help make grading a bit easier and more objective. It is important to be aware of what implications a teacher has at the time before grading. Grading in smaller segments rather than all at once may also help teachers feel less burnt out when grading. Scoring one question at a time is definitely a good method because it improves consistency among grades. I had not heard of grading one question at a time before, but I think it makes a lot of sense to do so, especially when there are large amounts of papers to grade. I think providing students with prompts is an excellent idea or allowing them to choose a prompt the night before. It depends on what skills the teacher is wanting the students to depict. If prompts are not given it can create a lot of stress for students since essay questions are usually worth more

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