Teaching Community Report
Fall 2013
Teaching Community Focus:
The fall 2013 English teaching community focused on acceleration strategies—ways to
challenge and prepare students for transfer level English (English 100). Part of the purpose of
the teaching community was to question assumptions and myths about the term “acceleration.”
While there had been much talk in the department of accelerating students through the
developmental education pipeline, many had forgotten (or didn’t realize) that acceleration
doesn’t have to only focus on the sequence of classes. Instead, the fall 2013 teaching community
focused on testing strategies for accelerating curriculum, in other words, challenging students
and better preparing them for transfer level English. We read a series of texts to help inform our
exploration into accelerated curriculum and then implemented some of these strategies in the
classroom. At the end of the semester, we assessed student work to see if the students were able
to rise to the higher expectations.
Specific Goals for the Fall 2013 Teaching Community on Acceleration Strategies
1. Implement acceleration strategies in the classroom in order to better prepare
developmental students for college level reading, thinking, and writing
2. Raise expectations of our developmental students by increasing the difficulty, relevance,
and complexity of the content and work
3. Redesign curriculum while attending to how basic skills can be subsumed in a deeper,
more holistic learning experience.
4. Shift the focus of curriculum design from a deficit-based model focused on what students
do not know to a capacity-centered approach that challenges students to do all that their
abilities allow
TC Participants:
There were five instructors, each focusing on a different English course ranging from English 70
to 221. We met for a total of 9 hours over the semester, each meeting set at 1.5 hours.
Participants included Monica Tapiarene, Dabney Lyons, Julie Ashmore, Steven Budd, and
Richard Cartwright.
Facilitator: Sara Toruno-Conley
TC Sessions:
We began the semester by reading the article, “Acceleration: An Opportunity for Dialogue and
Local Innovation” from the Senate Rostrum. Discussion of the article followed, and the
subsequent meetings revolved around reading different handouts and packets from 3CSN’s
California Acceleration Project website as well as Katie Hern’s accelerated classroom packet
(“Window Into an Accelerated Classroom). Sessions also involved the sharing out of progress
on our portfolio work, which involved implementing acceleration strategies in the classroom,
assessing the strategies, and reporting out on the results. Each member was required to survey
the students and make copies of some of their work to include in the portfolio.
The Course Portfolio Guidelines
Each member was responsible for creating a course portfolio, which included the following:
1. An introductory statement that addresses the following: the purpose and focus of the
portfolio (must be aligned with teaching community’s area of inquiry); an overall guide
to what is included in the portfolio and why it was included; general reflection on what
was learned in the process of documenting the work included in the portfolio; a statement
of how the author plans to make changes in the course based 4on what was learned.
2. Table of Contents
3. 3 Acceleration Practices (ex: assignments, lesson plans, activities, etc.) with attached
reflection on why they were written as they appear, and how they worked out, if revisions
are needed for the future and why, etc.
4. Sample of Student Work with attached assessment and instructor reflection on what each
sample demonstrates with regard to the focus of inquiry.
5. Student feedback on at least one of the acceleration practices
Note: To see completed portfolios, contact Sara Toruno-Conley in the English department.
Brief Summary of Teaching Community Portfolios
Monica Tapiarené
Monica chose to accelerate one of her ESL classes, ESL 044 (Advanced Reading and Writing)
by introducing two English 90-level readings into the course.
As part of an essay assignment, students were required to read both “Prison Studies” by Malcolm
X and “Open the Doors to Your Mind with Books” by Richard Rodrigues” (both at an English
90 level). To help students prepare and meet this challenge, Monica had them go through a
series of highly scaffolded activities such as completing an essay structure and outline packet, a
“Weak Spots” journal, and a writing process self-reflection. In addition, she incorporated
reading strategies such as “skimming” and “talking to the text” to help with reading
comprehension.
The majority of the students did well on the completed essays with most of them receiving ‘B’s.
This was after they had already completed rough drafts and received feedback from the
instructor. Because of this, Monica sees the overall project as a success and plans to continue
practicing acceleration strategies in her ESL classes.
Dabney Lyons
Dabney accelerated assignments in her English 90 class, redesigning two of her course units to
include assignments that would better prepare students for English 100.
For example, in preparation for her third major essay assignment she assigned a more
challenging non-fiction text to be read (in addition to other texts). Students were required to read
and respond to “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science” by Eileen Pollack as part of a
journal writing assignment which would help prepare them for the major essay assignment that
“looks at the effects of stereotypes in popular media” (1). This text would be one of the options
students could choose from when deciding which sources to synthesis in their essay.
Dabney’s results show that although the journal responses were “for the most
part…disappointingly shallow,” most of the students understood Pollack’s main points (2).
However, only three students chose to use this text in their essay and out of those three, two of
them were more successful at it.
For her last essay assignment, she required a “guided research component” which leads into the
research component requirement for English 100. As part of the preparation for that assignment,
she had the students complete annotated bibliographies and go to the computer lab for a
“targeted orientation on how to use the LMC databases…” (2). Dabney notes that overall
students chose relevant sources to incorporate into their essays.
As for the graded essay results, the majority of the students met competency even while some
struggled. Students seemed to “welcome the opportunity to do their own research,” and as the
majority of students were successful, Dabney sees this accelerated assignment as a success.
Julie Ashmore
Julie chose to accelerate components of her English 221 and 90 courses, the former being taught
in the current semester, the other in the next.
For her English 221 class, she assigned (for the first time) small group readings quizzes learned
from Katie Hern’s “Window Into an Accelerated Classroom” packet. The group quizzes
required students to give in-depth answers to each question assigned in the attempt to
“‘accelerate’ the amount and quality of student interaction with the readings to boost student
engagement, reading comprehension, the level of academic discussion and…synthesis…” (1).
Julie was hoping the quizzes would better prepare the students for the in-class essay although she
finds that “additional data gathering is needed” to determine whether they were beneficial.
For her English 90 course (to be taught in the spring 2014 semester), she revised two essay
prompts requiring more synthesis of sources. In previous semesters, her first essay prompt
would require no synthesis whereas the revised prompt now requires synthesis to begin for the
first essay. The second prompt revised is a summary-response essay. The previous prompt had
asked students to “compare and contrast… character situations, relations, and/or attitudes” from
one source, the novel Kindred (17). However, the revised prompt now asks students to compare
and contrast all the above elements in at least two sources, Kindred and non-fiction readings.
This requires a higher level of synthesis, preparing the students for English 100.