Zack Van Zante
Ms. Keener
AP US History
19 January 2016
Goal Analysis Reflection
The Second Quarter Goal I set for myself was to “get better at the essays.” This goal was to decrease the time it takes to write my essays while increasing the grade of the essays. This was attempted by thinking out how and what to write the essay about. Then making chunks of time to do the essay. Lastly, sitting down and making the jumble of words, thoughts, and quotes into sentences, to paragraphs, to an essay. Sadly, this goal was not completely accomplished, looking through the American Politics Shaping by the Federalist Party 1790-1820, Democratic President Jackson?, and APUSH Midterm.
Starting with the first essay, American Politics Shaping by the Federalist Party 1790-1820, near the beginning of the quarter. This essay was successful in my goal as it got a 6/6 on the grading scale. This essay was done in a shorter time than the ones during first quarter but still getting a perfect grade. This essay as graded before the grading terms were fully applied to essay though. So in the future more facts and outside information would want to be used.
The second essay, called Democratic President Jackson?, is the beginning of a downhill slope. Unlike the essay before, where it was less time but high grade and no marks, this essay got a 6/7 with a few grammatical mistakes. This essay may have taken as much time to complete but the grade was worse. Though that grade may be after the “enlightenment” time where the rubic became more understood by the teacher, it is still a worser grade. So next time add more outside information to get a 7/7.
The last essay is the APUSH Midterm essay, written about slavery and and politics. This is, hopefully, the bottom of the downhill slope for my essays. This essay got a 5/7 so the grades continue to decrease, but was written faster than any other essay I have had to write. So as the time decreases the grade decreases too, failing the goals hopes. This grade was from not connecting the essay to enough outside information, with the two outside points, and not weaving the documents the essay. To achieve this goal, I have decided to increase time back towards the original time taken, round a six hours over a couple days, to, hopefully, increase the grade again.
Overall the goal was failed from my point of view as points went down even though the time needed decreased, a fifty-fifty goal finish. For the next goal I plan on having the essays’ grade increase along with chapter notes being finished in a much less rushed way like the past two quarters. The way I plan to accomplish this is by taking more time, not less, on the essays. Also doing the chapter notes whenever there is free-time to do them when other activities are not overly distracting. Hopefully this will increase my essay grades back up to 6/6s and 7/7s, and have more time during vacations to vacation and not doing APUSH.