Student Examples from Summer Reading

Dear Students,

As promised, below are some examples of exceptional work from the summer reading assignment I returned yesterday. Many of you did excellent work in some area, and you should be proud of your areas of accomplishment. I suspect some of you were discouraged by your overall score, but I think for most of us, bumping up our performance will be mostly a matter of A) reading and following instructions thoroughly and precisely B) investing our work with more time and quality. Everyone can achieve success in this class if you focus and try.

As a side note, you should NOT be discouraged when you receive a B on an assignment. Some of you may be accustomed to receiving A's regularly on all assignments as a matter of course. However,  if you look at the criteria of a B on my rubric, you will see that a B indicates "Above Average, Meets Expectations." This means that you fulfilled the criteria and did a good job. It is not an indication that your work is substandard. The "A" level of work is inherently a rarer thing, hence the term "exceptional."

For those of you who are new to rubrics--it may take time to understand how they do and do not work. As I use them typically, they do not correspond to a precise point system. In other words, each aspect of criteria is not worth a specific number of points which I am adding and subtracting in a mechanical fashion to arrive at your score. Instead, I look at the overall trend of the criteria holistically. Criteria may be of different weights and varying levels of importance. For instance, in your Summer Assignment Rubric, I certainly view the neatness of your work as valuable, but I would not weigh that as heavily as "notes are of an exceptional quality...." The rubric is less about computing a specific grade and more about my attempt to give you insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your work. 

Another excellent tool is looking at other's work.  It's helpful for you to regularly review exceptional level work so that you better understand what it might look like.  Throughout the year,  I will periodically provide you with such examples. This is also why I will regularly have you read each other's work in class. We expand our understanding and grow by reading the writing of others.  If we pay attention, we will learn new ways to approach topics, new ways to think about things, and overall, gain a greater sense of what is possible.

If having read all of this and looking through the models, you still struggle to understand how I arrived at your grade, I'm always happy to talk you through it in person.  I want you to understand how to do your very best, and I will do whatever I can to help you accomplish that goal.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Price

one hitch here--needed to include part of speech, but otherwise
detailed, neat and organized