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TEP Essay

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The Purpose of Essay Writing In the Teacher Education Program

As a prospective teacher, you will study a range of topics designed to position you to address the academic and cognitive development of students. Clarity and organization of thought are two common topics central to the various classes in the Teacher Education Program. It is this very focus—the ability to state ideas clearly and concisely with grammatical and mechanical precision—that is captured and demonstrated in essay writing.

The essay, moreover, captures those qualities essential to effective teaching. In a well-written essay, as in effective teaching, the writer must organize his or her thoughts and communicate them clearly. Similarly, the writing must be engaging and deliberate. Beyond the importance of essay writing as it represents our ability to communicate clearly, the ability to write a well-developed, focused essay has become part of the teacher application process in many school systems. With these various criteria in mind, the School of Education administers the essay assessment to all teacher candidates and provides its candidates support to master this critical thinking skill. 

NAEP Definition

Writing at the Proficient level should address the tasks effectively and fully accomplish their communicative purposes. Their texts should be coherent and well-structured with respect to these purposes, and they should include well-crafted and effective connections and transitions. Their ideas should be developed in a logical, clear, and effective manner. Relevant details and examples should support and extend the main ideas of the texts and contribute to their overall communicative effectiveness. Voice should be relevant to the tasks and contribute to overall communicative effectiveness. Texts should include a variety of simple, compound, and complex sentence types that contribute to overall communicative effectiveness. Words and phrases should be chosen purposefully and used skillfully to enhance the effectiveness of the texts. A solid knowledge of spelling, grammar, usage, capitalization, and punctuation should be evident throughout the texts. There may be some errors in the texts, but they should not impede meaning.

Adapted from:

NAEP Writing Achievement Levels. (2012, August 6). Retrieved February 19, 2015, from http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/writing/achieve.aspx

Important Information

Deadlines

SOE must have your Praxis Core Knowledge Writing score of 162 or higher on record to complete checkpoint 1.

Tags

School of Education

School of Education