Rationale: No senior PLC at North 2012-2013

1. “We don’t come to college just for a major, and the arts shouldn’t be something to simply opt out of.” S. Moeller Rationale: • No senior PLC at North 2012-2013 • AP/ACP courses are the last English/Content course for students not majoring in this discipline– clearer idea of what skills and texts students need • Undergraduate observations for purpose of seeing what students are doing one year later in non ACP freshmen courses • Build senior preparedness? Goals: • To more closely align our college credit courses at the high school level with the courses at the university level • Examine how effectively we are integrating the Common Core Standards • Higher level expectations of all students • Honest discussion about the relative merits of what is most important for kids to have

2. Interview feedback Biggest problems found in undergraduate writing: • Students rely too heavily on the narrative, defaulting to personal response instead of implementing research– thought is that they aren’t really getting the difficult reading • Sustain an argument across different examples of support (think AP Lang and Comp essay) • Original ideas about texts for independent research • Problems carrying a complex idea across several pages of development

3. If students are to receive University of Missouri college credit for our course (accepted at all MO Universities and many outside MO), what must we include?  Dr. Sarah Moeller’s syllabus: Truman equivalent of English for freshmen (Lit and Comp) • part of “Truman Week”—course begins one week prior to other courses goal to build intellectual camaraderie before the student all attend class • cerebralism, depth of emotion • Students will receive direct writing instruction within every discipline: paragraph structure, citations, etc.

4. AP Audit, ACP observations, but still gap between high school and college • need to create more writing opportunities for different types of writing in class • more ways for students to receive immediate feedback (Clayton model) • attention to Common Core recommendations in Calkins book

5. Calkins’Goals • Standard 1) Reading closely • Standard 2) Determining Central Ideas and Themes • Standard 3) Analyze how individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text • Standard 4) Interpret language used in text – • Standard 5) Analysis Structure fo a Text • Standard 6) Author’s POV • Standard 7) Integrate and evaluate content in different media • Standard 8) Evaluate the evidence that the text lays out, weighing the validity of the author’s claims based on sufficiency and soundness of evidence and reasoning. • Standard 9) Compare two texts on the same subject, looking specifically at the ways those texts develop similar claims

6. Calkins’ suggestions: • increase access to digital media/texts • increase nonfiction access • increase skills for types of writing: arguments, informative/explanatory, narratives • poetry is overlooked, need more attention here • goals: reading to learn, reading to follow an author’s reasoning, reading to analyze claims and support those claims with evidence

7. “Every teacher needs to be a teacher of writing” *Dr. Daschke’s writing instruction (link on my website) Interviews with Robert Mielke, Monica Barron, Sarah Moeller, DereckDaschke, Greg Richter, Pat Gately, Rodney Taylor