Nothing here is marked on how much you like the book, how quickly you get through it, or how certain you sound while arguing about it. It is marked on what the work does: the claim it makes, the evidence holding the claim up, and whether a reader gets to the end without going back.
The seventy and the thirty
pie title Where your mark comes from "The semester's work" : 70 "The final evaluation" : 30
Every Grade 10 academic credit in Ontario is built the same way.
Seventy per cent comes from the marked work of the semester. It is not an average of everything from the first week onwards — it leans towards your most recent and most consistent work, because a mark is supposed to describe what you can do now. A paragraph you could not write in the first unit and can write in the last one is evidence about now.
The seventy is five pieces, and nothing else: The Story Behind the Story, The Scene, Staged, The Literary Essay, The Seminar, and The Media Deconstruction. They are not equally weighted — the essay and the seminar ask for more than the first story did, and they arrive later, which counts twice over. Ask me for the numbers whenever you want them. They are not a secret; they have simply never improved anybody’s essay.
Thirty per cent is the Final Examination, written in the examination period. It is the one piece that reaches across all four units at once: a text you have never seen, the studied texts from memory, an unseen media text, and an essay planned and written in the room. That is why it is the final evaluation, and why it is worth what it is worth.
The four categories
| Category | In this course, that means |
|---|---|
| Knowledge and Understanding | You know the text and the terms |
| Thinking | You can interpret and evaluate, with evidence, including evidence that complicates your case |
| Communication | A reader follows you; the writing is organised and the voice is yours |
| Application | You transfer what we learned to a text or a task you have not seen |
No piece uses only one of them, and which matters most shifts with the piece. The fourth is why the sight passages and the unseen media question exist: anyone can write about the story we read together, and the question this course asks is whether you can do it with something you meet for the first time.
Three kinds of evidence, and two of them are not paper
What you make is the obvious one: the story and the craft note, the director’s note, the essay, the seminar follow-up, the analysis and the text you build.
What I watch you do is the second, and it exists only in the period it happens in: what your pen does when you read your own sentence aloud, what your group does with a line of the play nobody in it can paraphrase, whether a poster changes after it is tested or only the argument about the poster does.
What you tell me is the third: the conferences in the drafting periods, the minute after your seminar question is approved, the two minutes at your desk while the room works.
Some of what you understand about a text will only ever exist out loud. A reading you can defend at your desk and have not yet got onto paper is real evidence, and it is recorded as evidence. That is not a kindness extended to people who find talking easier than writing — it is the only way two thirds of the evidence ever gets collected at all.
Your Reading Journal is where all of this is rehearsed, and it is not marked. What you write between classes is practice; practice is not evaluated. Bring it to every seminar and every drafting period anyway — the essays that arrive fastest belong to the people whose notes were already arguing.
What is not in your mark
How you work is reported separately, on the same report card, as E, G, S or N: responsibility, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative, and self-regulation. They will be reported honestly and they move your percentage by nothing. So there is no mark here for looking busy, for handing work in early, or for the number of times you speak. What you say in a seminar is marked — on what the contribution does to the discussion, never on how much of it there is.
The one exception is where the curriculum itself asks for the habit. Two marked pieces ask you to say what you did and what you would change: the three sentences you hand in with The Literary Essay, and the last paragraph of your seminar follow-up. Describing the strategies you used and naming the next thing to fix is an expectation of this course in its own right — as a writer and as a listener and speaker — so where a task asks for it, it is marked like anything else in the curriculum.
Your own judgement of your work is not part of your mark, and neither is a classmate’s. You will judge your own work against the criteria before you hand it in — Judging Your Own Work — and a partner reads your draft in every workshop. Both make the work better. Neither becomes a number; determining the mark is mine to do, from evidence.
That covers the checkpoints you mark yourself at the end of each of the first three units, and the timed practice before the examination. They exist so that you and I both find out what is missing while there is still time to do something about it. Nothing written on them reaches your percentage.
Working with other people
Three of the five pieces are made with other people, and none of them carries a shared mark.
- On The Scene, Staged the staging belongs to the group. What is marked as yours is your own director’s note and the choices you executed on stage.
- On The Seminar your group leads one discussion, and there is no group mark on it: your follow-up is yours, and so is what you do in the five seminars you do not lead.
- On The Media Deconstruction the analysis and the made texts are the pair’s. The note you write in class on the revision day is yours alone, and it is the part that carries your individual mark.
Drafts
Every major piece is drafted, read, and rewritten. The draft is not marked; it is where the teaching happens. Handing in a first attempt is allowed and reliably costs more than the time it saved.
Each of the five is looked at by me before it is handed in or performed — a conference, a note left on your desk, a round of the room — and there is a working period after that reading whose job is acting on it. Sometimes it is the next class; on The Scene, Staged it is the rehearsal. Either way it is on the schedule, and not something left for you to find time for at home.
Late work
Talk to me before the deadline and we will set a new one. Silence is the problem, not lateness: work that never arrives cannot be assessed, and something unassessed cannot earn a mark.
The most useful ten minutes in this course
Read the criteria table on a task page before you start, and again when you think you are finished. Most of the gap between a level 3 and a level 4 in this room is a criterion somebody did not read twice.
Curriculum connection
C4.1
describe a variety of strategies they used before, during, and after writing; explain which ones they found most helpful; and identify appropriate steps they can take to improve as writers (e.g., explain the benefits of sharing their brainstorming list with a partner; identify the graphic organizers they find most useful for organizing their writing ideas and the characteristics that make them useful; identify the proofreading technique or tip they found most helpful)
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B4.1
describe a variety of strategies they used before, during, and after reading; explain which ones they found most helpful; and identify detailed steps they can take to improve as readers (e.g., describe the strategies they used in reading a short story and explain how the strategies were helpful; use a Venn diagram to identify which strategies are useful at a particular stage of the reading process and which are useful at more than one stage – or at all stages)
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