Teaching the Features of Effective Writing: Examples of Student Writing

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These student essays accompany the Features of Effective Writing series of articles from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) and Learn NC, which concentrate on focus, organization, support and elaboration, style, and conventions. “These student essays provide examples of varying levels of performance on different types of writing assignments by students in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 (English I, II, III, and IV).”

Grade-specific tasks begin with general information about the curriculum and graduate to more specific details within each task. Tasks focus on different writing environments such as expressive, critical, informational, or argumentative writing and include a summary of the writing activity, information about the particular writing environment, connections to the curriculum, as well as student writing examples that demonstrate high, middle, and low performance. Each essay is annotated with comments based on the five Features of Effective Writing as well as suggestions for helping the student improve his or her writing.

A second group of student writing examples includes responses from students in grades 9–12 to two writing prompts. These exemplars are not categorized by performance or quality, “but are intended for a comparison of the range of performances and appropriate expectations throughout the high school grades.” As with the grade-specific tasks, each writing sample is complete with comments on each of the five effective writing features and ideas to help the student develop better writing skills.