Outreach Literacy Program Archives
Early English Composition Assessment Program
Preparing High School Students for College Writing
For over 10 years, CSTW and the Department of English's Writing Workshop and First Year Writing Program have helped high school students across Ohio make the transition to college-level writing through the Ohio Board of Regents' Early English Composition Assessment Program (EECAP).
Ohio State's EECAP project improves the writing of Ohio's high-school students through in-school discussions of college-level writing with Ohio State teachers, mock placement tests, and electronic exchanges between high school and Ohio State students. EECAP also enhances teachers' professional development through in-services on assessing student writing and incorporating technology in the classroom.
During 2001-03, Ohio State partnered with students and teachers in 10 rural, small town and urban public high schools including Fostoria's high school, three high schools in Meigs County, and four high schools in Columbus -- Linden McKinley, Mifflin, Marion Franklin, and Columbus South Urban Academy.
Teachers participating in our EECAP program believed their students benefited in several ways:
- "I would have to say having the other group be an audience for my students' writing was a great idea. I tell them things to work on, but they think it's just me being picky." -- Amy Tinsman, Fostoria High School
- "Maybe electronic exchanges are the solution to many of our problems in teaching writing!" -- Barbara Beegle, Southern Local High School, Meigs County
Linden McKinley High School
Fostering Collaboration between University and High School Teachers
As an extension of the Early English Composition Assessment Program (EECAP), formerly funded by the Ohio Board of Regents, CSTW's outreach team is currently partnering in the 2003-2004 school year with the English Department's Writing Workshop and teachers at Columbus' Linden McKinley High School.
The Linden McKinley project is designed to encourage communication about teaching and assessing writing between English teachers at Linden McKinley High School and first-year writing instructors at OSU through joint workshops on holistic assessment. In addition, consultants in CSTW's outreach program led writing workshops on writing essay exams for Linden McKinley students.
Recent workshops at Linden have dealt with analyzing essay writing prompts, identifying tasks in a prompt using keywords and close reading techniques, using more detail in writing, and fixing common sentence errors in essay writing.
Additional workshops are planned as the relationship between Linden and OSU develops. The workshops for teachers and students are a year-long project.
