Student Persistence in Early College Essay Writing
Cody Kalina, CUNY School of Labor & Urban Studies
Bio
Cody Kalina is a lecturer in literacy, writing, and urban studies whose work centers on culturally responsive pedagogy, social justice education, and helping students develop their voice. Teaching within SLU’s early college programs, he integrates personal narrative, post-colonial studies, cultural studies, and community-based learning into the classroom. His teaching emphasizes critical reflection and analysis, writing as advocacy, and expanding access to higher education.
Course Setting
My project takes place within SLU’s early college programs serving three different high schools. Many students are first-generation, multilingual, or historically underserved by traditional academic structures. The writing courses emphasize literacy, personal narrative, and social justice themes while supporting students through the transition into college-level writing and academic work. My students often balance academic responsibilities alongside work, family, and community obligations, making persistence, confidence, and meaningful engagement central concerns within the writing classroom.
Problem of Practice
How might differentiated and scaffolded essay assignments support student persistence in early college writing courses by creating more accessible pathways for engagement, stronger drafting and revision practices, and higher-quality final submissions? This project explores how layered assignment structures and multiple modes of participation may encourage students to approach academic writing with greater intentionality, confidence, and sustained investment in the writing process.Strategy
To support student persistence in early college essay writing, I implemented scaffolded essay assignments that divided major papers into smaller, structured stages. Rather than assigning only an essay at the end of each reading unit, students completed layered components such as individually annotated readings, paraphrasing worksheets, group annotation presentations, personal reflections, peer review workshops, and draft conferences. Students were also given opportunities to demonstrate understanding through multiple modalities, including oral discussion, visual annotation, and reflective writing, before completing formal academic essays.
These strategies were designed to reduce writing anxiety, increase accessibility, and create clearer pathways into college-level writing for students with varied academic backgrounds and literacy skills. The scaffolding process emphasized revision, reflection, and process-based learning rather than evaluation based solely on final products.
Research on culturally responsive pedagogy and writing studies suggests that scaffolded instruction and multidraft composition practices can improve student engagement, confidence, and persistence. By slowing down the writing process and valuing multiple forms of participation, the course encouraged students to remain invested in their writing development and produce more intentional and higher-quality submissions.
Documentation
Essay 1 Prompt
This document is the essay prompt with multiple options for students.
Measuring Impact
Grade Progression, Paper 1
The average grade progression across drafts. Compares Spring 2026 to Fall 2025
Grade Progression, Paper 2
The average grade progression across drafts. Spring 2026 demonstrated stronger improvement across drafting stages.
Student Survey Findings
This document has some graphics based on aggregated data from student surveys at the end of the second essay unit.
Analysis
The strategy of incorporating more individual assignments such as individual reading annotations, group annotation presentation, scaffolded writing assignments, and including a creative option for the essay unit did yield higher grades. However, it did not address the issue of late submissions.
Overall, I’d say that the sequential drafting requirements supported student persistence with the formal essays and encouraged ongoing student engagement. Also, the scaffolded assignments allowed students to exercise their perspectives leading up to the formal essay drafts. In the second essay, the average grade on the final draft was a 94% which shows that not only essay grades grew, but student writing confidence grew as well.
Recommendation
Based on my strategy implementation this semester, I would recommend including more opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding is a valuable endeavor. More opportunities like this not only positively impacts students' grades, but also reinforces learning objectives organically while students build toward formal end of unit assessments, like essays.
Resources
- Sequencing and Scaffolding Assignments Guide: https://lsa.umich.edu/sweetland/instructors/guides-to-teaching-writing/sequencing-and-scaffolding-assignments.html
- Scaffolding and Sequencing Writing Assignments: https://clas.ucdenver.edu/writing-center/sites/default/files/attached-files/scaffolding_assignments.pdf
- Scaffolding the Writing Process: https://teaching.uchicago.edu/resources/scaffolding-writing-process-approach-assignment-design-sosc-core