How to Help Juniors regarding the ACT Writing

They write essays all the time.

(*Facepalm*) the issue is, the ACT’s writing section differs from the others enough through the writing normally done in school that I see plenty of students underperform in a manner that is wholly preventable. Typically “good” writers are receiving scores of 6 or 8 (away from 12), once they should be getting ultimately more competitive numbers.

While it’s definitely not an grade that is 11th teacher’s “job” to do ACT/SAT prep or even to “teach towards the test”, there is a problematic reality that when teachers don’t get involved a little, most students won’t understand this knowledge and/or skills anywhere else. And that, my teacher friend, is worrisome.

So what’s taking place, and what are the easiest steps an English teacher can take to greatly help juniors be more ready?

Here are the biggest culprits:

1. The timing is much more intense than school. It really is thirty minutes total, including reading the prompt while the brainstorm that is entire draft, and proofread process. That task may be daunting if students get writer’s block, have test anxiety, hardly understand the prompt when you look at the heat for the brief moment, or struggle to wrestle their ideas into submission.

If your students haven’t done timed writing in some time, are used to 45 minutes, or aren’t effective in it, chances are they’ll need assist to cope. Check out my timed writing unit to help students get practice completing a cohesive draft in a shorter time.

2. Students do not know the (new) rubric.When the ACT changed the writing test in 2016, the prompt style AND the rubric both changed. The assessment isn’t any longer just a typical 5-paragraph (or so) opinion essay. Students are meant to also:

• acknowledge, support, or refute other viewpoints
• provide some mix of context, implications, significance, etc.
• recognize flaws in logic or assumptions manufactured in a viewpoint, utilizing it with their advantage if required
• (still write a cohesive essay with a thesis and a variety of evidence, as before)

all in thirty minutes or less. English teachers might help by at the very least groing through the rubric in class, or even assigning an ACT-style essay that gets assessed included in the class.

3. The linguistic bar is high. Aside from the content characteristics described in #2, students are supposed to have grammar that is decent varied sentence structures once and for all flow, transitions within and between paragraphs, and extremely great fiction or synonyms.

English teachers: in the event your writing rubrics or grading style don’t typically address these, consider bringing it up in class, assessing of these characteristics in the next essay, or reading over a mentor text that DOES meet this bar (see #4).

4. They want to see examples. I strongly recommend that students go to this url to not just read a sample 6/6 essay, but compare it to a 4 or 5 essay to see its differences. I do a compare/contrast activity for this reason when I teach my ACT writing lessons. The stakes are high enough that it’s worth groing through a mentor text to see what the expectations are and debunk the basic idea that it’s impossible to complete.

The conclusion i have been tutoring the ACT for enough time to recognize the distinctions does essaywritersite.com/buy-essay-online work between the old and new versions, as well as without “teaching to the test”, there are simple actions educators usually takes to assist juniors stay at or over the national average and achieve their college dreams. Using even some of these tips will help students be a little more ready on test day, and more grateful as a teacher that they had you.