I first heard of the concept of an “essay autopsy” a few years ago in the AP Lit Facebook group. Teachers used it when a student wrote a poor essay and wanted to earn some points back. I liked the idea, but didn’t really use it. Then I heard about using it when a whole class struggled on a writing assignment. This I tried, and I found it useful in general. But for the most part, essay autopsies have been a nebulous notion that I didn’t really try.
Last week, I put a twist on the essay autopsy and used it primarily to streamline feedback, rather than give students a second effort at a writing assignment. I found this method perfect for our first writing assignment, or for those who are required to get writing samples in the first few weeks of instruction.
How I Used It
In the first few days of school, I like to give my Honors sophomores a writing assignment. Their writing serves as a writing sample to inform my instruction for the year and I usually don’t give many instructions or parameters when I assign it. My wanted to see what they write when they are given a broad topic and just told to write. The assignment was due at the beginning of the next class and word counts varied from 100-600 words.
The next day, I went over the year’s writing expectations. Most of my students took English 9 at our school last year, so I know they discussed our method of analytical writing, called APE (Assert, Prove, Explain). Although I didn’t specifically require an APE paragraph, sophomores in Honors should default to writing in APE style automatically. This slideshow reviewed those requirements, as well as expectations in formatting, mechanics, and style.
Once we finished the slideshow, I handed out our Essay Autopsy handout. I asked students to judge their essay as being “alive” or “dead,” based on our writing expectations. Then, they judged each section of their essay in the same way. If “alive,” they explained what they did well in their writing. If “dead,” they explained what they should do to improve their writing.
When they finished, they submitted these handouts back to me.
Here’s the Word doc of the essay autopsy handout, which you can edit to fit your needs.
Essay Autopsies for Feedback
It’s important to know that I did this activity before I read my students’ essays. They understood this wasn’t reactive to their writing, but a proactive step to inform my reading. In scoring them, I read their essays, then immediately read over their autopsy. I found that 90% of the feedback I would have given, my students identified on their own. For some, I even had to tell them that I thought they were too hard on themselves. Scoring went quickly and I don’t feel any students were upset by their feedback since they give it to themselves in the first place.
I loved this approach to the essay autopsy because it told me what I expected to be true with most writing assignments: students know what to do, they just don’t always do it. And I get it. Sometimes, we procrastinate on things and don’t do all the things we know we should do. This assignment let my students be real about their writing, acknowledging things like, “I know I should have done this, I just forgot” or “I guess this isn’t a good thesis. I see that now.” And instead of coming down on them for things they already know they did wrong, I could just nod and read on. We both know better, and we’ll do it better next time.
Modifications & Other Uses
Since this was a writing sample, I treated this as a completion grade. For formative assignments, I would encourage students to give themselves a score for the assignment based on their essay autopsies. In your feedback, you can agree with or modify their grades and explain why.
If using this for summative writing assignments, I would pair an essay autopsy with an option to redo the assignment. This is how most teachers use them, in fact. The autopsy gives the student a chance to explain what they did wrong and you can ensure they know what they’re supposed to do on a second draft. If the autopsy doesn’t correctly identify a problem in a student’s writing, that is a good opportunity for a conference session to workshop the essay together.
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