Essays and Compositions – Basic Literature
A.C.E. teaches writing skills. From the beginning, the fundamentals are taught:
- basic grammar
- using effective words (exact nouns and verbs, interesting adjectives and adverbs);
- changing sentence structure.
Paragraph stucture (topic sentence; supporting sentences) is introduced in Literature and Creative Writing 1054 and taught from English 1083 and 1094; then in upper secondary English.
Outlines
The paragraph and essay outline is an important tool that is developed from English 1072 to upper secondary English. Outlines are used in Basic Literature activities.
Although the compositions in Basic Literature do not count for the final assessment, they are vitally important for students to develop their writing skills.
Composition activities for Basic Literature include:
- preparing an outline
- writing a first draft
- writing a final draft.
The activity instructions state that the outline and first draft should be submitted along with the final draft.
Do not let your child by-pass these activities.
Do not accept half-hearted or incomplete work, just because they “don’t count” for assessment.
The outline and first draft should be submitted along with the final draft. If the draft is on a computer, it should be saved as a separate file. This is so you (the supervisor) can compare the work before and after editing.
Scoring
For you to score your child’s writing, you have to use your own judgement. Because we don’t record essay scores, your assessment does not have to be professionally accurate. You just need to be satisfied that your child has taken care, put in some effort, and answered the question as far as you can tell. Your assessment should also be able to encourage your child and help them to strive for quality work.
For a less subjective assessment, you can use our Essay Rubric. It breaks the essay down into components that can be assessed according to specific criteria. This will enable you to give a percentage score.
It is available from our website. Log in, go to the Member Area, go to the Downloads page. As you are logged in to see this post, you can use this link.
The best way to use the Essay marking Rubric is to let your child look at the descriptions and their values before doing the work. This will let them know what standard to aim for. Then, after submitting the writing, you mark it and show your child each trait and why you gave the value for it. Allow your child to make comments, ask questions, and even change your mind if they makes a strong argument.
This article is also on our Notes on PACEs and Subjects page, under Literature.