CSU EXPOSITORY READING AND WRITING COURSE ASSIGNMENT TEMPLATE | 1 Assignment Template This template presents a process for helping your students read, comprehend, and respond to nonfiction texts. We recommend that, at the beginning of the course, you guide your students through each step of the process. As they become familiar with the reading and writing strategies and internalize some of the basic processes, they will be able to complete some of the steps on their own. By the end of the course, your students should be able to read an appropriate text on their own, without elaborate preparation, and write about it coherently. We recommend that your students read contemporary essays, newspaper and magazine articles, editorials, reports, memos, voting materials, assorted public documents, and other nonfiction texts for the activities. Comment [SC1]: “Process” is key, here. The Assignment Template is designed to provide you with a structure for planning instruction that recognizes that understanding texts and responding to them orally or in writing are PROCESSES of making meaning. The hope is that with multiple repetitions of these processes, students will begin to develop automatic approaches (skills) for effectively grappling with complex texts—and then writing about them in academically proficient ways.CSU EXPOSITORY READING AND WRITING COURSE ASSIGNMENT TEMPLATE | 2 Template Overview Reading Rhetorically Prereading Getting Ready to Read Introducing Key Concepts Surveying the Text Making Predictions and Asking Questions Introducing Key Vocabulary Reading First Reading Looking Closely at Language Rereading the Text Analyzing Stylistic Choices Considering the Structure of the Text Postreading Summarizing and Responding Thinking Critically Connecting Reading to Writing Writing to Learn Using the Words of Others Negotiating Voices Writing Rhetorically Prewriting Reading the Assignment Getting Ready to Write Formulating a Working Thesis Writing Composing a Draft Organizing the Essay Developing the Content Revising and Editing Revising the Draft Revising Rhetorically Editing the Draft Reflecting on the Writing Evaluating and Responding Grading Holistically Responding to Student Writing Using Portfolios Comment [SC2]: Rhetorical reading is both ANALYTICAL and POSTIONED. Students learn to ask, “Who is speaking here about what? What are his/ her credentials? What is he or she doing to convey an argument?” Comment [SC3]: Scaffolding the reading, making connections, building background knowledge are all aspects of prereading. Comment [SC4]: Take advantage of the multiple opportunities for vocabulary/ language discussion throughout. Comment [SC5]: This is getting the gist, reading with the grain. Comment [SC6]: Tone or style analysis. Comment [SC7]: ALWAYS REREAD THE TEXT! Get students to understand that complex texts require more than a single reading. Comment [SC8]: Tone and style analysis. Comment [SC9]: Organizational strategies: (Narration? Description? Analysis? Definition?) Use “Says and Does” here. Comment [SC10]: “They Say, I Say.” Summarizing is cognitively challenging. And needs explicit instruction. Comment [SC11]: Often student writing tasks are here. Comment [SC12]: Using writing to help students access prior knowledge and process new content is a well‐r easearched, flexible, and powerful instructional tool. A sample prompt: “Write everything you know and all the questions you have about X.” Comment [SC13]: How to choose the useful bits from primary text and integrate them effectively into your own argument. Comment [SC14]: Formal writing taught as a series of recursive processes moving from invention to publication. Comment [SC15]: This encourages students to read like a writer (metacognition) by asking, “What did you learn as a writer ?” Comment [SC16]: What are students doing well? What do they need to work on next? When teaching writing, think fluency and form…THEN correctness! CSU EXPOSITORY READING AND WRITING COURSE ASSIGNMENT TEMPLATE | 3 Reading Rhetorically Prereading English−Language Arts (ELA) Content Standard: Writing Applications (Genres and Their Characteristics) 2.3 Write reflective compositions: a. Explore the significance of personal experiences, events, conditions, or concerns by using rhetorical strategies (e.g., narration, description, exposition, persuasion). Getting Ready to Read As your students approach a reading assignment, engage them with the text through quickwrites, group discussions, brainstorming, or other exercises to achieve the following goals: • Help your students make a connection between their own personal world and the world of the text. • Help your students activate prior knowledge and experience related to the issues addressed in the text. • Help your students share their knowledge and vocabulary relevant to the text. • Help your students generate questions that anticipate what the text is about. Quickwrite (5 minutes). Before a class discussion or a reading, assign your students a five-minute quickwrite. Consider what they know about the topic and what they might think about it. You might ask them to volunteer to read their quickwrites or discuss them with a partner or in a group. Word Analysis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development 1.0 Students apply their knowledge of word origins to determine the meaning of new words encountered in reading materials and use those words accurately. 1.3 Discern the meaning of analogies encountered, analyzing specific comparisons as well as relationships and inferences. Introducing Key Concepts This section discusses opportunities for threading the module together conceptually. Key concepts are highlighted and taught through activities that will be revisited during the module in your students’ discussions and their writing. Vocabulary strategies are emphasized in the modules, and specific directions for you to teach new words or concepts are presented in this section. The strategies are expanded on in other sections. The introduction of key concepts may include the following strategies: • Identifying and discussing a key concept or term in such activities as defining, discussing denotation and connotation, and comparing and contrasting • Using a prereading activity—such as rankings and rating scales, graphic organizers, role-play activities, and scenario discussions and readings—to activate prior knowledge,