Prior to today’s class period Chimuanya had submitted her second thought letter. I was really impressed with the amount of time and effort she had put into the assignment. It was less of a thought letter and more of the first draft of an essay, and so that is what it will be.
At the beginning of class today we discussed the two articles we had read over Spring Break, one about the reform efforts of Geoffrey Canada and the other about Michelle Rhee. Chimuanya was enthusiastic about both of them. I was pleased when she drew historical connections between the Baldwin and Woodson pieces we had read earlier in the semester, and the modern day circumstances presented by these articles. She was able to independently evaluate the articles and articulate her opinions, which were clear both in her verbal comments and in the text of her essay.
One skill I am really trying to work with Chimuanya this semester is her ability to proofread her own writing. This week I underlined the location of grammatical errors in the essay, and then had her try to correct them herself. This enabled me to find out which she was able to spot on her own, and which flew under her radar. I am going to continue working with her on identifying dependent versus independent clauses to prevent run-on/incomplete sentences and confusion between semi-colons, colons, and commas.
Good strategies, especially at this point in the semester, and for the ones you discuss in the final paragraph here–all those sentence and punctuation issues that seem to mar otherwise pretty good writing by this student.