It’s time for the district writing exam for juniors and the
kids are stoked… Well, they’re putting in effort anyway. The exam requires the
students to answer whether or not The
Great Gatsby accurately depicts the American experience in a minimum of
1000 words. The kids really seemed to like the story. My Ct did a good job of using
the movie along with the story. After completing the story, the class was
rewarded with a viewing of the newest cinematic version of the book. It was
actually really neat to see the class be able to pick out the differences
between the book and the two versions of the movie. My ct asked questions to
make sure that the kids knew what happened in the book verses the movies. She
didn’t want them to confuse the events and write about things that never actually
happened in the book.
The district writing exam is probably one of the longest
writing assignments the students will have to complete. My ct required that
they all turn in an outline before they begin the rough draft because they are
still new to the process. Most of the class chose to argue that the story does accurately
depict the American experience, but they seemed to have trouble figuring out
how to approach the subject. They all seemed to have firm grasps of the characters,
the plot, and the socioeconomic levels shown in story, but they were not sure
how to do more than just give an overview of the story. It was an interesting task to lead them to the
ideas that would tie events and people that compared to those in the story. I was
leaving a trail of bread crumbs in the form of questions. There were still
times where I wanted to just give them the answer to connect the dots, but the
writing assignment was a test. I couldn’t just say these people from our time
have or had money and didn’t care and did things that hurt other people. It was amazing how few of the students knew
about Enron or Berny Madoff, although many of them could name a rich and famous
person who was found not guilty of murder.
I still think that many of the kids will have trouble
meeting the length of the assignment. They’re not allowed to take the paper
home to work on. My ct said that there is nothing in the outline that says that
students cannot take the paper home, but in the past she has had work turned in
that is at a level beyond the student’s typical writing. Her decision means that there will be more
class time devoted to it. She had the rough
draft due last Thursday, and many of the students did not have it turned in by
the end of class. In an act of kindness, she allowed them to come in and work
during advocacy on Friday. Tomorrow we will go to the computer lab and I am
interested to see how it will go. I am also worried about the kids that tend to
struggle with the smaller writing assignments.
