5 paragraph essay defending standardized testing
Standardized Testing Upon Reviewing the. There were none with limited English proficiency; those with Non-Limited English Proficiency ranked 50, there were no free or reduced lunch scores, those at non-poverty scored , while those at Poverty scored In a graph showing the Stanford Achievement Test 10th Edition results in eading for the entire system in ussellville City, Alabama, the males rank and females rank, the blacks rank at , the Hispanic at , and the whites far outstrip either of these at Those with limited English proficiency scored , those with Non-Limited English Proficiency ranked , those with free lunches scored 41, those with reduced lunch scored 54, those at non-poverty scored 65, while those in Poverty scored In a graph showing the Stanford Achievement Test 10th Edition results in eading for the Alabama School of Fine Arts, males ranked 88 and females ranked 91 52 , the blacks rank at 85,…… [Read More].
For and against standardized tests: Two student perspectives
That just about everyone reading this is well-familiar with the 5-paragraph essay is a testament to why it needs to be retired, and by retired, I mean killed dead, double-tap zombie-style, lest it rise again.
The 5-paragraph essay is indeed a genre, but one that is entirely uncoupled from anything resembling meaningful work when it comes to developing a fully mature writing process. If writing is like exercise, the 5-paragraph essay is more Ab Belt than sit-up. They cannot hope to develop unless and until we first undo the damage done. Not really. At least not these rules, and the way students learn them.
More troublesome is what the 5-paragraph essay does to the writing process. The act of writing is primarily treated as a performance meant to impress a teacher or score well on a standardized exam. Mature writers need to navigate choices rooted in genuine rhetorical situations.
They must consider audience, purpose, and message. The 5-paragraph essay requires none of this. My teacher, Mrs. Goldman, told us we needed to write directions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Goldman brought in the necessary supplies for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then told us we had to make our sandwiches exactly according to our directions. If you forgot to mention that you needed bread on which to spread the peanut butter, you smeared it on the plate.
That day, I learned that writers need to be careful with their words because if someone is asked to follow them, things can go very very wrong. Goldman was teaching us a number of different things, genre awareness, audience, structure and sequencing. None of it had anything to do with a standardized assessment. We were solving a writing-related problem. Most of all, we were absorbing the lesson that above all, writing is done for audiences. A book report is the solution to a genuine writing-related problem.
The steady encroachment of standardized assessment on education and learning has only exacerbated the damage of the 5-paragraph essay. If the 5-paragraph essay was only one genre among many, we could safely contain the contagion, but as it is the easiest form to assess, it is now the monolith at the center of the English classroom.
It is a spirit killer for both students and teachers. Be the first to know. Get our free daily newsletter. Survey results on '15 Fall Scenarios' suggest what students want. The student view of this spring's shift to remote learning. More colleges accept Duolingo English Test scores as evidence of proficiency.
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How the shift to remote learning might affect students, instructors and colleges. View the discussion thread. Google Tag Manager. Advertise About Contact Subscribe. Enable Javascript to log in. Title Kill the 5-Paragraph Essay. There may be no greater enemy to quality writing than the 5-paragraph essay.
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A standardized test. (via Shutterstock). These two essays were written by students in Katherine Cohen's 7th-grade English class at Greenberg. he stack of essays I hauled home on Friday sits on my desk, waiting to be read. students to pass standardized tests, which may require formulaic responses. to writing about literature' Their defense of the five~paragraph essay was fierce'.
The five-paragraph essay is a topic long debated by educators, and strong opinions abound. Five-paragraph essays are not the majority of what Zarins sees, but she points out that she teaches medieval literature, not composition. Kristy Olin teaches English to seniors at Robert E. Lee High School in Baytown, Texas. Consider paragraphs.
The five-paragraph essay format often puts students' thinking in a box.
That just about everyone reading this is well-familiar with the 5-paragraph essay is a testament to why it needs to be retired, and by retired, I mean killed dead, double-tap zombie-style, lest it rise again. The 5-paragraph essay is indeed a genre, but one that is entirely uncoupled from anything resembling meaningful work when it comes to developing a fully mature writing process. If writing is like exercise, the 5-paragraph essay is more Ab Belt than sit-up.
5 paragraph essay defending standardized testing
The students were assigned the task of writing a persuasive letter. Some of those letters have been revised by the students and submitted to be published in various Philadelphia media outlets. Do you like standardized tests? Your answer is probably no. Department of Education said.
Kill the 5-Paragraph Essay
It began by pointing out that the most popular posts at Edutopia that year had not been five paragraph essays. Not one has paragraph after paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting details, and a concluding sentence. Like Sheppard, I want to argue that the genre does not preclude authenticity, nor stifle creativity. Moreover, the ability to compose oneself in five coherent paragraphs is a valuable skill that it is the responsibility of schools to teach and, indeed, to test. And since what gets tested gets taught, all originality, creativity, and authenticity has been sucked out of student writing to standardize it for an exam. But when we require a native Dane to write in English we are not demanding inauthenticity; we are offering them a new language in which to express themselves authentically. By its very definition, we might say, prose demands conformity. But to demand that students express themselves in an essay is not to demand they stop being themselves. They are to be themselves in a particular way under particular conditions, that is all.
When it comes to writing essays in college, we all need a place to start. Think of the five-paragraph essay as just that.
The 5 paragraph essay is considered to be the standard essay writing assignment. Once you have learned how to write it, you are prepared to tackle any other one.
