Homeschool World Forum

[Isikole]

What is the best way to grade composition? What have you more experienced Moms/Dads found works best for you?

My 9th Grade daughter is using Easy Grammar Plus, Writing for 100 days, and we're using Exploring Literature from Pearson Globe, but I'm not quite sure that we're doing enough for a high school English I course? Am I worrying for nothing?

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.......

[Theodore]

Who will be reading the essays? Some people mark you down significantly for mechanical mistakes, while others only care if your essay does a good job of answering the question. Your target audience determines how you grade things. All that aside, however, here are some categories to factor in:

1) Does the essay answer the question, or if it's open-ended, stay focused on one topic? Confuse your audience, and your essay isn't much use.

2) Does it cover the material in detail, or just take a brief stab at it? Length of essay is probably the most important factor in getting a good score on standardized tests, even though a short essay can often do just as good a job of answering the question.

3) Does it flow well? Overly short or long sentences are generally bad, as are essays not separated well into coherent sections. Word use should also be consistent in both size and style - you don't go from scholarly expert in one paragraph to friend of humanity in the next.

4) Is it mechanically correct in its grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation? This is the easiest category to score, but many professors put a lot less emphasis on it these days than they should.
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[Janet Tatman]

I graded 50% on content (well-researched,organized, well-written paragraphs that had appropriate sentence structure and transitioning phrases), 10% on mechanical errors (spelling, vocabulary, punctuation), 15% on presentation (did the composition address what type of writing it was suppose to be, ie descriptive paragraph, essay, precis, etc.), and 10% on bibliography, etc. Hope this helps!
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[Isikole]

Thank you - that helps a lot.......

A friend of mine also recommended rubrics, so I found some on the internet which give very specific requirements for different forms of writing, and how to score. A lot easier than I thought..........