The student will write a persuasive essay convincing the teacher of who is to blame for the witch hysteria and the subsequent deaths of innocent people.** This performance assessment was developed by a collaborative team of teachers and division staff from Middlesex, Poquoson, and West Point school divisions.

This resource is a quick reference guide for students as they craft effective introduction paragraphs in response to persuasive writing tasks, such as the Writing SOL Short Paper. The resource includes essential components, stylistic options, guiding questions, and an exemplar paragraph based on a released SOL prompt.

Students will be defending the main character’s hero or villain status by analyzing the author’s choices within a text to create an analysis essay. Students may have the option of selecting the text/author/main character/villain or hero and will have the option of selecting the author’s choices to analyze.** This performance assessment was developed by a collaborative team of teachers and division staff from Middlesex, Poquoson, and West Point school divisions.

Students will be writing a standard-format letter to the editor of a local newspaper using data and research on an issue they care about that affects others. While it must be a school-appropriate issue, students have the opportunity to select any issue of interest to them to rebut the original writer’s post.** This performance assessment was developed by a collaborative team of teachers and division staff from Middlesex, Poquoson, and West Point school divisions.