Now that you understand how Essay Guided Drafts can provide students with scaffolding and support as they draft full-length essays, you’re ready to create one! Below, you’ll learn how to set up a custom or premade Essay Guided Draft.
💡 Before starting on Guided Drafts, we recommend that students complete pre-writing so that they have an idea of what they want to write.
To create an Essay Guided Draft, you can follow these steps:
- Head to our Assignment Library by selecting "Browse & Assign" at the top of your screen.
- Under Assignment Types, select "Writing.
- Under Guided Draft, you'll be given 2 options: You can browse our collection of prompts in pre-made assignments which are categorized by genre, or you can create your own by adding any prompt you’d like.
💡 While browsing prompts, you can select the eye icon to preview the student view of the assignment!
- When you choose an essay prompt from the pre-made Essay Guided Drafts by selecting the blue button, the next page will pre-fill each field. You can always still customize it or add your own prompt.
- If you select "Create your own," the next page will guide you all of the fields you can customize.
You can add your prompt or source that students can reference while they write, select the genre of the essay, customize the grading rubric, and even select the specific parts of the essay you want students to focus on.
- Once you’re done customizing the Essay Guided Draft, select "Continue" at the bottom of the screen.
- On the final page, you'll be able to select which class(es) you want to receive the assignment, set a start and due date, and create a name for the assignment.
You can assign to the whole class by checking the box next to your class name, or assign to individual students by expanding the "Choose Students" drop-down menu and selecting specific names. This allows you to provide the assignment to individual students instead of the entire class.
- Once you’ve filled out the assignment details, select "Assign."
Once you create an assignment, you will be able to add new students that join your class to existing assignments but won't be able to unselect students that have already been assigned.
💡 Ready to assign? Let's create an Essay Guided Draft!