Writing College-Entrance Essays guides your students step by step through the process of analyzing a prompt on a college application and creating an on-target essay response that impresses admission departments. Instructions, activities, examples, interactives, and downloads help students gather information about their academic and extra-curricular activities, community involvement, and aspirations for the future. Students then express these details in an effective essay. You can present this unit right from your interactive whiteboard.
First students warm up by listing what they want out of a college or technical school—and what the school might want out of them. Then students read a sample college-entrance prompt and one student's college-entrance essay. After responding to the sample prompt and essay, students work step by step through the process of writing their own college-entrance essays.
- Prewriting activities help students accurately analyze any writing prompt on a college application. Students also think about and gather important biographical information from their past and articulate goals for their future.
- Writing activities help students write a beginning that grabs the attention of admissions officers and provides a strong focus for the response. The middle paragraphs develop main points that support the focus, providing key biographical information in a narrative that accurately but compellingly tells the student's story.
- Revising activities help students elaborate ideas in their response and craft a voice that both narrates and persuades. Students also get a peer review and use a checklist to improve their college-entrance essays.
- Editing activities help students eliminate unnecessary shifts in tense or person as well as correct capitalization of college-specific titles and names. An editing checklist guides students in correcting punctuation, spelling, usage, and grammar.
- Publishing activities help students archive their finished essays, ready for use for similar college-entrance prompts.