1. Unit IV: Lesson 2 Slow Way Home Persuasive Essay Assessment Milinda Jay, Ph. D

2. Sunshine State Standards LA.910.3.3.2 The student will revise by creating clarity and logic by maintaining central theme, idea, or unifying point and developing meaningful relationships among ideas; LA.910.3.3.3 The student will revise by creating precision and interest by elaborating ideas through supporting details (e.g., facts, statistics, expert opinions, anecdotes), a variety of sentence structures, creative language devices, and modifying word choices using resources and reference materials (e.g., dictionary, thesaurus) to select more effective and precise language; and LA.910.3.3.4 The student will revise by applying appropriate tools or strategies to evaluate and refine the draft (e.g., peer review, checklists, rubrics).

3. Read aloud Chapter 12 of Slow Way Home

4. Write Now, with your rubric beside you, spend 45 minutes writing your essay. Teachers: be certain students write their name on the cover sheet only, and not on the essay itself.

5. Prompt: Convince the state legislature that kids should be allowed to choose with whom they wish to live.

6. Or Convince a judge that kids should not be allowed to choose with whom they wish to live.

7. Write your name on cover sheet ONLY!

8. Hand in completed essay with cover sheet to your teacher After students have completed essays, teachers number the essays and the cover sheets so that when you take the cover sheet off the essay, you will still be able to identify to whom the essay belongs.

9. Divide students into groups of 6 Hand each group of six six essays minus cover sheets so that the author remains anonymous.

10. Peer scoring Have students take turns reading the essays aloud to their group, Decide together what score the essay should receive using the rubric. For each essay, group members be certain to discuss why each section is scored in the way it is scored.

11. After scoring all 6 essays, When all essays have been carefully scored, turn them back in to the teacher who then attaches the cover sheet to the essay, and hands the essay, with the scored rubric back to each student.

12. Revise in class (45 minutes) Student revises his or her essay, At the end of the 45 minutes, turn essay back in to teacher to be scored with a summative grade.