A 10th grade student in an "average" class wrote "Fate for Man" as a part of an in-class,

on-demand exercise.  (Sophomores begin to take honors or college preparatory classes

at our school.)  Within that ninety minute period, this student was required to read a

lengthy rubric, answer questions about it, devise a 20 point brainstorm, a three level,

three step sentence outline, and word process the exam.
 

This student had been on block scheduling and had therefore been enrolled in English II

approximately 31/2 months before the December examination.  She wrote on the basic

prompt of "Men are sometimes masters of their fate."  She was required to write an argu-

mentative essay using the quote and ideas from the drama Julius Caesar as they relate

to real life.
 

I as teacher am pleased with the thoughtful attention-getting opening sentence in the

first paragraph.  I am pleased also with the thinking embodied in the fourth sentence

which decidedly sets forth the notion that the choice of the conspirators decided not

only Caesar's fate but their own fate as well.
 

I am satisfied to a degree with the concessions that this student made in the second

paragraph  as she moved from the drama to real life application.  I am less satisfied

with the reasoning process which asserts, "They think about the future when indeed

the future is based on fate."
 

I am delighted with the appropriately accurate hooking transitions between paragraphs.

Though the final paragraphs leave much desired in the area of clarity and development,

this student joins the ranks of many other students in my class who  run out of time by

the last paragraph and don't have the time to adequately proofread.  Be that as it may,

 this student in an average class and in a pressure writing scenario has done a fair job of

thinking, recollecting, organizing  expressing and relating literary ideas to real life, as the

prompt requires.  Indeed, she should have no difficulty making the leap to expressing

well-developed ideas and a more subtly refined writing style of her choosing.
 
 
 

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