Sixth Grade WRAP: Best School Award
 The good news:
1. Word counts looked good. If you had had the full two
periods, most of you would have had enough words to be
a well-developed essay. For the WRAP, a well-developed
essay will be 750-800 words.
2. Transitions looked good. Most of you did a really nice job
of transitioning from one paragraph to the next.
3. Topic sentences looked good. Most of you told the topic
of the paragraph in the first sentence of the paragraph.
4. Spelling looked good. I saw very few misspelled words.
The bad news: 
“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
John Wooden famous college basketball coach
1. Vocabulary needs improvement: you, big, great, thing,
a lot.
2. Pronoun antecedent agreement: A student (one) can
get the sports of their (more than one) choice.
3. Weak thesis: A good thesis statement tells the topic
(award) and controlling ideas (paragraph topics)
4. Writing to the prompt: Your school has not already
won the award. How is your school different than
most schools?
5. Interesting hooks: Most of you asked a question.
Several of you left out the hook altogether.
6. The greatest weakness was the lack of specific
examples to support the general reason your school
should receive an award.
7. Many of you closed with a question such as, “What
about your school?” The prompt says you are writing to
a panel of adult judges who will be hearing from many
schools. The judges are not students.
8. Several of you said, “I think….”
9. Do not say, “As you can see, etc.” That is padding your
essay and will cost you points.
Exemplars:
Introductory paragraph:
“And the best all around school is ………!” That is what they
say when they give the Best School Award. Canterbury School
is applying for this prestigious award. Canterbury is perfect for
this award because we meet all the requirements of academics,
extra-curricular activities, and the people themselves.
Thesis statements:
1. If our school were chosen for an award for the best school
in our area, we would win it because of our athletics, the
arts, and after school activities.
2. Canterbury should win the best school award because of
its academics, sports, and after school activities.
Well-developed paragraph:
1. To have the very best school, you can’t just have great
teachers and a wonderful student body. You must
have spirituality. Canterbury School is full of
spirituality, especially since it is an Episcopal school.
What does it take to be a spiritually sound Episcopal
school raising spiritually sound students? It takes
time to come close to God and to learn about Him.
Canterbury School achieves this by having chapel
three times a week and by having theology classes
with the chaplain once a week. In chapel, sometimes
eighth- graders present their own sermons.
Canterbury provides a fun, safe environment to learn
about God’s commandments. During theology classes,
students learn all about God, the Bible, and even other
religions. Canterbury is a school with great
fundamentals to help students grow in spirit. The
spirit is so strong there; it is a wonderful school, one
good enough to win an award.
2.
(This paragraph uses specific examples to support the topic of great
teachers. The writer also refers to how Canterbury is different from other
schools. ) Canterbury has great teachers. Usually
students at public schools complain about their
teachers being mean to them, but at Canterbury our
teachers are extremely nice. Mrs. Markham is both a
math and science teacher and is one of my favorites at
our school. When I forgot my homework one time, she
didn’t yell at me at all. Mrs. Niegelsky is also a very
nice teacher. There has never been a time when I
have heard her raise her voice at someone. Father
Finnin teaches theology. He has to be one of the
funniest teachers ever! When he does yell at
someone, he always makes a funny joke at the end.
3. Now, I’m going to give back your papers back to you.
• You have two grades. The top grade is the outline
grade, which is based on how completely you
planned your essay.
• The bottom grade is 100, which is an effort grade
for the work you did during the actual writing
period. The 100 has nothing to do with how good
your paper was.
• The circled grade is the average of the other two
and is the one that went in my grade book.
• Pay close attention to the scores I gave you in the
six categories as well as anything I marked on the
essay itself.
3. Complete the self-evaluation on the back of the rubric to
gain even more feedback.
4. Spend the remainder of the period revising your essay.
Work independently. You may use a thesaurus or
dictionary during this time. I will also be available
to answer questions about your paper.
5. Try writing a better hook. Try painting a “word picture”
of your school, taking into consideration the topics you
will writing about.
6. Try adding specific details to a paragraph.