Writing Across the Curriculum
and
College Reading at SDC
Faculty and Staff Session Three
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Session Facilitators:
Dr. Judith Smith
Mrs. Janice Williams
Overarching Question
How can we Assist the Adult Learner
at Sojourner Douglass College
in Mastering Writing Skills While
Developing Critical Thinking Skills?
Approach for
Implementation
Design and Implement a College-wide
Writing Across the Curriculum
Initiative that Integrates
Critical Thinking Skills and Meets the
Unique Needs of the Students at
Sojourner Douglass College.
Session Three Goals
• Provide a liaison between reading and writing skills
addressed in the Common Core State Standards and
the writing and thinking skills addressed in the
General Education Core Competencies and major
content courses.
• Explore the connection between reading and writing
strategies that incorporate abstract conceptualization
skills in formal academic writing.
• Explore options that promote the reading - writing
connection in solving real world problems.
Review:
WAC Has Two Major Categories
Writing-to-Learn
Writing-to-Demonstrate-Knowledge
Review: Writing-To-Learn…
• Fosters critical thinking that requires analysis,
application and other higher order thinking skills;
• Uses short or informal writing tasks to help
students think through key concepts or ideas;
• Uses journals, logs, responses to questions,
summaries, free writing, and other writing
assignments to learn ideas and concepts.
•
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/Science_WAC_2_3_264454_7.pdf
Review: Sensory Cortex
Concrete Experience
•
•
•
•
Watch a Film
View a Demonstration
Play a Game
Conduct Field
Observation
(David Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory,
1985)
Non-Graded Writing
Personal writing that records
observations, thoughts, and
feelings during the initial
experience and raise
questions and expresses
puzzlement
(James Zull, Art of Changing the Brain, 2002)
Review:
Temporal Integrative Cortex
Reflective Observation
Learners consider the
concepts and issues
after reading, listening
to lectures, participating
in class discussions,
and hearing different
points of view.
Personal Exploratory Writing
*Journal entries that connect new
material to personal experiences
and precious knowledge;
*Personal pieces based on
autobiographical experiences with
a topic or concept;
*Personal reflective papers that
encourage questioning, openended approach rather than
thesis-with–support writing.
Focus: Writing-ToDemonstrate Knowledge
• Students synthesize information and explain their
understanding of concepts and ideas.
• Students write for an audience with a specific
purpose.
• Students use inquiry-based writing to connect
with real-world experiences.
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/Science_WAC_2_3_264454_7.pdf
Session Three Focus:
Frontal Integrative Cortex
Abstract Conceptualization Formal Academic Writing
Learners try to achieve abstract
understanding of the concepts
and issues by mastering and
internalizing their components
and seeing the relationship
between new material and other
concepts and issues.
Thesis-based analyses and
arguments written in an
impersonal and
dispassionate tone, targeted
for a critical and informed
audience, based on closely
investigated knowledge, and
intended to reinforce or
challenge concepts.
Session Three Focus:
Motor Cortex
Active Experimentation
Learners actively use the new
concepts to solve problems by
applying them to new situations.
Position Papers
(Based on cases that use the new
concepts)
Write-ups of a student’s
laboratory or field research using
the concepts;
Proposals applying new concepts
and knowledge to solve real-world
problems;
Creative pieces demonstrating
understanding of new materials.
Summary: The Relationship
Between Thinking and Writing
• Informal exploratory writing in an expressive mode:
journals, in-class free writes though letters, reflections,
electronic postings to class discussion board, reading
responses
• Closed-form thesis-governed academic or professional
writing: analysis, arguments, proposals, research reports.
• Writing Alternative genres and styles: Open-form personal
Essays reflections, blogs, posters, experimental pieces,
dialogs, interviews, articles, pamphlets, white papers,
opinion-editorials (op-ed) pieces. web pages, multimodal
projects
John Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical
Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011.
Operationalize Using
Bloom’s Taxonomy Revised
Verbs for Bloom’s
Taxonomy Revised
• Remembering - define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat,
reproduce state
• Understanding - classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify,
locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase
• Applying - choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate,
interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write
• Analyzing - appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate,
discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test
• Evaluating - appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support,
value, evaluate
• Creating - assemble, construct, create, design, develop,
formulate, write.
Challenge for WAC in College
Writing to Read Difficult Texts
Successful reading at the
college level involves an array of
practices and skills, which vary across
disciplines, and which are not always
made explicit to students.
Brooklyn College http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/academics/faculty/wac.php
Challenge for WAC at SDC
• Accelerate reading and writing instruction that scaffolds or
provides supports for our adult learners:
• Reading: Students must grapple with works of exceptional
craft and thought whose range extends across genres,
cultures, and centuries.
• Writing: Students have to become adept at gathering
information, evaluating sources, citing material accurately,
and reporting findings from their research and analysis of
sources in a clear and cogent manner.
Common Core State Standards for Literacy in all Subjects: Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
Teaching and Fostering
Deep Reading
• Barrier: School culture rewards surface reading.
• Solution: Teachers evaluate student performance at the
levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
• Barrier: Students are resistant to time-on-task for deep
reading.
• Solution: Help students understand that experts are not
necessarily speed readers and that time is needed to read a
text deeply.
John Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking,
and Active Learning in the Classroom, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011.
Teaching and Fostering
Deep Reading
• Barrier: Many teachers lecture over reading material therefore
students rely on this crutch.
• Solution: Cease this practice so that students can practice, be
challenged and grow as readers.
• Barrier: Students fail to adjust reading strategies for different
purposes.
• Solution: Help students learn levels of reading comprehension:
gist, main ideas, detail, and inference and application.
John Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking,
and Active Learning in the Classroom, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011.
Teaching and Fostering
Deep Reading
• Barrier: Students fail to adjust reading strategies to
different genres and structures.
• Solution: Help students understand the context of the
reading (writing) assignment especially with primary and
secondary research texts.
• For Example: An empirical research study in the social or
physical sciences requires a different strategy than that of a
theoretical/ interpretive article in the humanities.
John Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical
Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011.
Teaching and Fostering
Deep Reading
• Barrier: Students have a lack of connection with the author,
how they themselves are similar to or different from the
author, with regard to cultural literacy (codes), political
biases, or philosophic views.
• Solution: Acknowledge with students the difficulty of the
text, identify the target audience, encourage the use of a
dictionary, and show students your personal note-taking
and responding processes.
John Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical
Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011.
Students as
Thoughtful Readers
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Marginal Notes Approach
Reading Logs
Summary Writing Approach
Summary/Response or Double-Entry Notebooks
Graphic Organizers
Imagined Interviews with the Author
Writing “Translations”
John Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical
Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2011.
Key Ideas and Details
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.1
Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and
to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual
evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions
drawn from the text.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2
Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze
their development; summarize the key supporting details
and ideas.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.3
Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop
and interact over the course of a text.
Craft and Structure:
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.4
Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text,
including determining technical, connotative, and figurative
meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape
meaning or tone.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.5
Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific
sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g.,
a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other
and the whole.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.6
Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content
and style of a text.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.7
Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media
and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well
as in words.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.8
Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in
a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the
relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.9
Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or
topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the
approaches the authors take.
Reading and Writing Connection
and the Common Core
• Writing Standard Nine requires that students be able to write
about what they read.
• Research and media skills and understandings are embedded
throughout the Standards rather than treated in a separate
section.
Source: Common Core State Standards Initiative: Preparing America’s Students for College &
Career
Reading and Writing Connection
and the Common Core
To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a
technological society, students need the ability:
• to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, report on
information and ideas,
• to conduct original research in order to answer questions
or solve problems,
• and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive
range of print and non-print texts in media forms old and
new.
Source: Common Core State Standards Initiative: Preparing America’s Students for College & Career
Reading and Writing Connection
and the Common Core
• The grades 6-12 standards are divided into two sections,
one for English Language Arts (ELA) and the other for
history/social studies, science, and technical subjects.
• This division reflects the unique, time-honored place of
ELA teachers in developing students’ literacy skills while at
the same time recognizing that teachers (across the
curriculum) in other areas must have a role in this
development as well.
Source: Common Core State Standards Initiative: Preparing America’s Students for College & Career
Reading Writing Connection
And the Common Core
• Literacy promulgated by the Standards is extensive
research establishing the need for college and career ready
students to be proficient in reading complex informational
text independently in a variety of content areas.
• Most of the required reading in college and workforce
training programs is informational in structure and
challenging in content;
• Postsecondary education programs typically provide
students with both a higher volume of such reading than is
generally required in K-12 schools and comparatively little
scaffolding.
Source: Common Core State Standards Initiative: Preparing America’s Students for College & Career
Generic Reading Strategies
• Monitor comprehension
• Ask questions
• Pre-read
• Make predictions
• Set goals
• Test predictions
against the text
• Think about what one
already knows
•
Source: Carnegie Report, (2010)
• Re-read
• Summarize
Discipline-Specific
Reading Strategies
• Build prior knowledge
• Build specialized vocabulary
• Learn to deconstruct
complex sentences
• Use knowledge of text
structures and genres to
predict main and
subordinate ideas
• Map graphic (and
mathematical)
representations against
explanations in the text
• Pose discipline relevant
questions
• Compare claims and
propositions across texts
• Use norms for reasoning
within the discipline (i.e.
what counts as evidence) to
evaluate claims
Source: Carnegie Report, (2010)
Text Structures
and Graphic Organizers
Main Idea and Details
Similarities & Differences
Text Structures (Continued)
Thesis and Support
Classification and Criteria
Text Structures (Continued)
Sequence of Events
Argument
Text Structures (Continued)
Cause and Effect
Mathematics Word Problem
Mathematics Concept
Four Step Problem Solving
Application to Coursework
• Select a passage or word problem from a current text.
• Identify the text structure that applies to the passage
or word problem.
• Graphically organize the content using one of the
graphic structures presented.
• Compose a summary of the passage or word
problem.
Update of WAC at SDC
• Design and Implement an Assessment and
Evaluation Model (Ongoing)
√ Use WEAVE to Organize and House the Initiative
(Google Docs)
√ Determine Goals, Objectives, Inputs, Timelines, and
Expected Outcomes
√ Identify Faculty Representatives from each
Department (Ongoing)
– Help coordinate the initiative across all sites
– Serve as Liaison to the Departments
– Provide Faculty Support and Professional Development
Update for WAC at SDC
√ Review English Composition I, Communication
Skills I, and Reading Comprehension Syllabi
– Select core Writing-to-Learn Strategies and
Rubrics to Pilot
– Revise Syllabi
_____________
√ Review and determine resources and needs of the
Writing Center to Support WAC across all
campuses;
√ Provide WAC professional development to Writing
Center Tutors on providing assistance to faculty
Department Representatives
Sign the Interest Sheet to Serve as a
Writing Across the Curriculum
Department Representative.