8/24/17 (Level)

Today, we looked at the Apply Texas essay prompts.

We’ll be addressing Topic A, so the prewriting we are doing today is specifically for that topic. Notice the topic says “Describe your family, home, neighborhood, or community, and explain how it has shaped you as a person.” What does that mean? Well, it means don’t write about all of those things! It’s better to focus on one narrow topic rather than four broad ones. So, to help us decide what we want to focus on, we are going to fill out the prewriting chart.

As always, if I ask you to do something, I do it myself. Here is my example prewriting. But don’t get worried that mine is so long: I’m OLD! I probably have a lot more experience than you. You can also see that that I was able to spend a LOT of time in certain areas, and then didn’t have much to say in other areas. That’s okay. That should show you that you probably should AVOID writing about that topic!

This will be due tomorrow: we’ll have all day to work on this today, and tomorrow, we’ll have the day to finish the Writing Territories and this, the Apply Texas Prewriting.

8/24/17 (AP)

I’m going to go boring on your today and read notes off a PowerPoint! Hooray! These are the notes from the Harvard book that I’ve been referencing.

Choose a college entrance essay prompt (from Apply Texas or elsewhere) and write to that topic. Aim for about 500 words, unless the prompt asks for something else.

I know some of you (my grade grabbers!) want to to go STRAIGHT to the rubric to see how to get an A! Well, cool your jets for a second. We are going to create our OWN rubric tomorrow based on what we talked about today. All the AP classes are going to make suggestions, and Mrs. James and I will flesh it out for you.