The Document Based Massacre

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Well, not really. The essays for this DBQ were much better then my class last semester at this point. Which, makes me feel like I'm presenting it better.

The current assignment in class is to become the AP Reader and grade DBQ's. We used the 2006 DBQ and wrote our own. We get calibrated with a few of the samples from the collegeboard's website; just to make certain we know what we're looking for (I don't think I can post those). To grade we use the following sheet:

I believe this is the same sheet the AP Graders used over the summer, so this should be pretty accurate.

It took about three for us to be on the same page with the level of specificity desired. It' is amazing to see how harsh the students are with other students work; far nastier than I would be. Here are a few samples:
Essay 1
This essay ended up scoring an 8. We believed it had an acceptable thesis (not the best though), addressed all the documents and only misunderstood one (document 8), used 7 of the 8 documents as defense for the thesis, had two instances of POV, used more than 2 groups, and had additional documents. We felt that the essay could have had a better thesis and the POV was a little weak so it did not merit a 9.

Essay 2

This essay ended up scoring a 5. We believed it had an acceptable thesis, only addressed 7 of the documents and did not show an understanding of but 4, used 6 of the 8 documents as defense for the thesis, had two instances of POV, used more than 2 groups, and had additional documents. We felt that the essay could have had a better thesis, needed to be more clear on why the documents are important and the handwriting should have been better.

Most of the students did well with the structure I had them use. The structure is located in this blog slideshow thing. Hopefully the next time around the students will have no problem with the essay and can start to grow outside of the outline.