Dear Parents, Students and Faculty
We are sending this letter to notify you of changes that are being made in the writing program at South Fremont High School. STEAM and Readiness Writing have been extremely effective in helping all students improve their ability to formulate ideas and communicate through writing. In fact, our testing shows that our students perform about 25% higher in writing than they do in reading and math. However, after many discussions, the school improvement team and administration at SFHS feel changes need to be made that will allow writing excellence to continue, but also free up some time and energy of the faculty and students to be used in pursuit of other areas of academic achievement.
STEAM/Readiness Writing will be discontinued. It will be replaced with a writing portfolio. The writing portfolio will be as follows:
Every class at South Fremont High School will contain at least one written assignment.
The writing assignment will be academically rigorous and business/workplace appropriate.
The classroom teacher will be responsible for assigning and grading the writing.
Each year the student will select 6 of their classroom writing assignments to upload into an online portfolio.
The six yearly writing submissions will become part of the Senior Project and presented with the Senior Project as a graduation requirement.
Students will not be assigned any new STEAM/Readiness Writing paragraphs. However, they will be required to complete the paragraphs that were assigned from previous years. In order to graduate, all the paragraphs required from previous years must be completed and passed. Students will be able to submit their paragraphs every Monday and Tuesday of each week.
Seniors will need to complete 30 paragraphs.
Six paragraphs from 2019-2020 semester 1
Six paragraphs from 2019-2020 semester 2
Six paragraphs from the 2020-2021 school year
Six paragraphs from 2021-2022 semester 1
Six paragraphs from 2021-2022 semester 2
Juniors will need to complete 18 paragraphs
Six paragraphs from 2020-2021
Six paragraphs from 2021-2022 semester 1
Six paragraphs from 2021-2022 semester 2
Sophomores will need to complete 6 paragraphs
Six paragraphs from 2021-2022 semester 1
We feel that the STEAM writing program was highly beneficial. The test results are clear. However, the emphasis and energy dedicated to this goal were out of balance with other learning of equal importance. We ask for your support in making this change which we feel will create a better, well rounded educational experience for each student.