The Expository Reading and Writing Course
An Introduction
The Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum (ERWC) is based on the assumption that to be a good writer one must be
a good reader. Further, effective readers and writers acquire a reflective and rhetorical stance toward their own work
and the ideas and concepts represented in the work of others. The curriculum therefore seeks to forge relationships
between reading and writing to encourage thoughtful questioning of texts, promote exploration of new perspectives,
and enhance ways of acquiring knowledge.
Use of the ERWC is becoming more and more widespread among high school faculty, with many teachers taking
the professional development course and implementing various modules. Additionally, the number of schools adopting
the course to satisfy the “b” area of the UC’s “a-g” requirements is growing. We hope that California’s teachers become
increasingly aware of the course, the capacity it has to reduce CSU remediation, and the importance of expository
reading and writing for college readiness.
The competencies promoted throughout the curriculum are aligned with the California English Language Arts K12 standards and are foundational to becoming a successful expository reader and writer at the post secondary level.
Since reading and writing encompass a wide range of complex skills that may unfold differently for each student, the
curriculum uses a variety of pedagogical approaches, with the teacher serving as coach and facilitator as students
develop writing fluency, increase their abilities to critically read and evaluate college-level texts, and gain expertise in
skillfully employing a wide array of reading and writing strategies that will serve them well during their college careers
and beyond.
The Expository Online Reading and Writing Community
http://writing.csusuccess.org/
Some FAQs about the ERWC
What is the purpose of the ERWC, and what does it include?
The goal of the Expository Reading and Writing Course is to prepare college-bound seniors for the literacy demands of
higher education. Through a sequence of fourteen rigorous instructional modules, students in this yearlong, rhetoric-based
course develop advanced proficiency in expository, analytical, and argumentative reading and writing. The cornerstone of
the course—the assignment template—presents a process for helping students read, comprehend, and respond to
nonfiction and literary texts. Modules also provide instruction in research methods and documentation conventions.
Students will be expected to increase their awareness of the rhetorical strategies employed by authors and to apply those
strategies in their own writing. They will read closely to examine the relationship between an author’s argument or theme
and his or her audience and purpose; to analyze the impact of structural and rhetorical strategies; and to examine the
social, political, and philosophical assumptions that underlie the text. By the end of the course, students will be expected
to use this process independently when reading unfamiliar texts and writing in response to them. Course texts include
contemporary essays, newspaper and magazine articles, editorials, reports, biographies, memos, assorted public
documents, and other nonfiction texts. The course materials also include modules on two full-length works (one novel and
one work of nonfiction). Written assessments and holistic scoring guides conclude each unit. In addition, a set of six
text-based grammar units aligned with the first six modules in the program are designed to make students proficient,
independent editors of their own writing.
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The Expository Reading and Writing Course
What are the benefits of the course?
Thoughtful engagement with the course materials teaches students explicit strategies for approaching complex texts, and
for using texts as a starting point for their own academic writing. Repeated practice with specific ways of approaching
texts and ways of approaching academic writing tasks helps students develop portable skills applicable to reading and
writing tasks throughout their academic careers and beyond.
Why wait until senior year to introduce expository reading and writing?
You don’t need to wait. If you adopt the course, you could offer it to either juniors or seniors. However, you should be
aware that the course was specifically designed to give students whose scores on the augmented CST (the EPT) indicate
that they are not yet prepared for college-level academic reading and writing an opportunity to develop needed
proficiencies before arriving on campus to discover they have been placed in a developmental English class.
Can the course be segmented, rather than taught as a whole?
Many schools have chosen to use what we call a “punctuated adoption,” with a SLC or department integrating specific
modules at different levels beginning in 9th grade. It should be noted that the modules are sequential. The strategies
presented in later modules build on those presented earlier, and so the modules are most effective when taught in
sequence.
Is the course scripted?
Absolutely not! The modules are based on an Assignment Template (which can be used with many different texts). Each
module first follows a pattern of engaging students with texts through pre-reading, reading, and post-reading strategies to
help them develop a rich understanding, not only of the textual content, but of each author’s rhetorical presentation of the
material through critical rhetorical analysis of ethos, pathos, and logos. Activities in each module then help students
connect their reading to a written task (or tasks) before leading them through a sequence of pre-writing, writing, and postwriting experiences. It is assumed that teachers will use the Assignment Template to guide them as they select the
instructional activities appropriate to the needs of their particular students.
What is the ERWC designed to teach?
The purpose of the ERWC is to help students develop the analytical and critical thinking skills needed for academic
reading and writing. The modules use informational texts primarily because high school students typically have little
experience with nonfiction reading beyond what they encounter in school text books.
Is the ERWC teaching just to a test?
Absolutely not! The test simply indicates if students have the academic reading and writing skills they will need in all
post-secondary work. The focus on non-fiction provides students with experiences in the predominate genres they will
experience once they leave high school. (Unless students become English majors, it is unlikely that they will be assigned
to read literary texts at any point in their post-secondary careers.)
How can teachers receive training?
Every CSU has an Early Assessment program (EAP) Coordinator in charge of scheduling and delivering ERWC training.
Information about the professional development is available at http://www.calstate.edu/eap/support_hs_teachers.shtml or
by contacting Nancy Brynelson at the Center for the Advancement of Reading (nbrynelson@calstate.edu)
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The Expository Reading and Writing Course
What about literature? Do we lose its cultural values?
The key to the ERWC is the Assignment Template which can be used with literature as well as informational text.
Because the goal is to teach students how to read, how to think critically about their reading, and how to write critically
about that reading, the choice of particular texts for doing so is quite flexible. Ideally teachers would use the sequence of
pre-reading through post-writing presented in the Assignment Template as they plan instruction for all texts.
The Assignment Template FAQ
1. Why a Template? What are some of the benefits to using a Template when planning instruction?
Templates in general represent an awareness that activities follow patterns and a distillation of the template
authors’ understanding of those patterns, drawn from experience and research. We use templates to remind us of
what we know about those patterns and to guide us in following what we know to be productive patterns.
In this case, the Template represents what we know about planning instruction to help students improve their
comprehension and composition of academic texts. As the authors of the “Theoretical Framework” for the
English/Language Arts modules write, the modules and template “reflect the current knowledge-base on how
best to support comprehension instruction at the secondary level, [by providing] a recursive approach to the
teaching of reading and writing that aims to support student’ developing abilities to negotiate a variety of
complex texts” (p. 1).
This template brings together in one place a variety of activities designed to evoke students’ prior knowledge of
the subjects addressed by their readings, prepare them with the background knowledge and strategies to make
meaning from these complex texts—through pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading strategies—and
guide students in writing responses to those texts. Whatever the content area, guiding students in developing
explicit strategies for reading and writing has been shown to lead to improved comprehension of the content and
improved reading and writing abilities (Biancarosa and Snow, Davidson and Koppenhaver, 1993; Graham and
Perin, 2007).
2. Do I have to do all of the activities in the Template? Every time?
No. The template includes a variety of activities to be used at each of the stages of reading and writing
instruction. Use only the activities that fit your students, your goals for the unit you are teaching, and the
particular reading students will be doing. In this way, the template represents more of a menu than a script.
3. Can I add other activities into the Template if I want?
Absolutely! The template is meant to guide and support, not to limit.
4. How do I decide which of the activities to choose?
This is an important question, the answer to which depends heavily on the particulars of your context—your
students’ knowledge and skills and your goals for the particular unit you are teaching. For instance, if you are
teaching students to compose a type of writing that will be new to them, activities such as the descriptive outline
(composed on texts of that type) will be particularly helpful in guiding them towards understanding the
organization of such texts. Select the activities that will build on what students already know and can do and
move them toward what they must know and be able to do in order to successfully complete your final
assessment for the unit.
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The Expository Reading and Writing Course
5. What if my students don't like some of the activities, or think they are boring?
As you have no doubt experienced, students may dislike activities for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes, an
activity does not go well because we are new to using the activity, and we can learn from students’ comments
about how to improve our implementation. Sometimes, students dislike an activity because it is new to them,
and they need to repeat it to see its value. Sometimes, it is an activity that works well with one or another
population of students. As always, you must use your professional judgment to decide what to do with the
information your students provide you in terms of how well the activity is working.
6. Where can I get more information on using the Template?
The CSU task force that designed the Template and modules has created an online community for teachers
using the materials: http://writing.csusuccess.org/. Faculty who have attended a professional development series
or leadership institute are given access to the online community.
7. Students do a lot of writing with this Template. How am I supposed to grade all of that?
You need not collect and grade all of the writing that students do as they move through the modules (or a
module you design using the Template). Much of the writing they do is writing to learn, and they have already
gleaned the benefit of the writing by doing it. For much of the writing, if you want to hold students accountable
for doing it, you can just check it (or stamp it) to certify that they have done it. In terms of using the writing-tolearn activities for assessment, you can often learn what you need to know about students’ mastery of reading
strategies by circulating around the room as students are writing their annotations or brainstorming. Certainly, it
may be worth collecting some of the informal writing students are doing, so you can more closely examine their
understanding of both the content and the reading strategies, but you should be selective about what you read
and very clear about your purpose in reading.
8. Do I have to change the activities I use with every unit? Or can I use the same activities several times
until my students are comfortable with them?
In order for students to truly internalize the strategies they are learning, it is valuable that they practice those
strategies repeatedly over time. Thus, while you will certainly want to use a variety of activities over the course
of the year, it is helpful to re-use activities so that studentsbuild their skills and strategic thinking.
9. How does using the ERWC Template work with backwards planning?
Once you have identified desired results (Stage 1), you must determine acceptable evidence (Stage 2). This
evidence can be both the final text/performance that students will produce for the module and the
evidence they produce in formative assessment activities along the way. Consider that final performance
and the skills and knowledge students need to develop in order to succeed at it, and look to the
Assignment Template for writing‐to‐learn activities that also function as formative assessments.
Select the learning activities from the Template that will help students develop that knowledge and those
skills, keeping in mind that you are also teaching them reading and thinking strategies that they can use
beyond this particular unit and performance.
10. How do I use the Template with a literary text?
The basic pattern of pre‐reading, reading, and post‐reading still applies with a literary text.
Pre‐reading—Introduce students to key concepts they will need to understand the text, and help them
develop strategies for preparing to read texts similar to the one in this module in the future.
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The Expository Reading and Writing Course
Reading—When reading literary texts, first‐reading strategies such as Book marks, Chunking, GIST,
Graphic Organizers, Quickwrites, Reciprocal Teaching, Say Mean Matter, SQP2RS, Talking To The Text, and
Think Aloud are all still appropriate (See Appendix A in the Template for explanations).
Re‐reading strategies such as looking closely at language, analyzing stylistic choices, and considering the
structure of the text will help students to develop sensitivity to the practices of literary analysis. You may
have to inflect these activities differently to emphasis literary rather than rhetorical analysis.
Postreading—Summarizing is a crucial academic skill for students to learn and practice with all kinds of
texts, as is thinking critically. Again, you may need to inflect these activities to focus on literary analysis
rather than on rhetorical considerations.
Models—Once you have decided on the final performance students will create for your module, you
should include models of that kind of text over the course of the unit. Guiding students through the steps
of rhetorical analysis—particularly chunking, descriptive outlining, analyzing stylistic choices, and
thinking critically (rhetorically) will help to prepare students for these final performances.
Similarly, because most of the texts we ask students to produce in response to literary works are
expository, all the activities connecting reading to writing and writing rhetorically apply to units centered
on works of literature.
11. How do I use the Template if I'm not teaching English?
The basic pattern of pre‐reading, reading, and post‐reading followed by pre‐writing, writing, post writing
still applies with disciplinary texts outside of English. Because the conventions of genre, organization,
stylistic choices, and language use differ in each academic discipline, it is especially important that
disciplinary teachers outside of English guide their students in reading (and writing about) those texts.
Pre‐reading—Introduce students to the key concepts they will need to understand the reading, and help
them develop strategies for preparing to read texts like the one in this module in the future.
Reading—When reading disciplinary texts, first‐reading strategies such as Book marks, Chunking, GIST,
Graphic Organizers, Quickwrites, Reciprocal Teaching, Say Mean Matter, SQP2RS, Talking To The Text, and
Think Aloud are all still appropriate (See Appendix A in the Template for explanations).
Re‐reading strategies such as looking closely at language, analyzing stylistic choices, and considering the
structure of the text will help students to develop sensitivity to the practices of analysis and
representation of knowledge in your discipline. Depending on your purpose in reading a particular text,
you may have to inflect these activities slightly differently to emphasis disciplinary rather than rhetorical
analysis.
Postreading—Summarizing is a crucial academic skill for students to learn and practice with all kinds of
texts, as is thinking critically. Because the kinds of ideas that matter in summaries in academic disciplines
vary, it is especially important that you guide students in summarizing appropriately for your discipline.
Again, you may need to inflect these activities to focus on disciplinary analysis rather than rhetoric.
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The Expository Reading and Writing Course
Models—Once you have decided on the final performance students will create for your unit, you should
include models of that kind of text over the course of the unit. Guiding students through the steps of
rhetorical analysis—particularly chunking, descriptive outlining, analyzing stylistic choices, and thinking
critically (rhetorically) will help to prepare students for these final performances. Similarly, because most
of the texts you will ask students to produce are expository—whether they are lab reports, research
papers, analyses of cause and effect, document-based responses, explications of proofs, or others—all the
activities connecting reading to writing and writing rhetorically apply to modules centered on
disciplinary texts.
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