Working the Reading

1. Working the Reading Carrie Goulding Irvine Valley College

2. IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE Total Students: 15,498 Male/Female Ratio: 44% male/56% female Full-time/Part-time Ratio: 34% full time/57% part time Day/Evening Enrollment: 31% day, 35% evening, 35% day and evening Median Age: 23 Writing class size: capped at 25 students

3. IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE Caucasian American: 37.9% Asian American: 29.2% Hispanic American: 11.2% Middle Eastern American: 4.8% Filipino American: 2.7% African American: 2.3% American Indian: .4%

4. Irvine Valley College Students take a text-based writing assessment to place them into the correct writing class 70% of students place into writing classes that are below transfer level

5. THE STANDARDS For high school and college

6. COMMON CORE ANCHOR STANDARDS FOR READING Integration of Knowledge and Ideas Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. 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. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

7. Students entering colleges and universities are expected to: • Read texts of complexity without instruction and guidance • Summarize information • Relate prior knowledge and experience to new information • Make connections to related topics or information • Synthesize information in discussion and written assignments • Synthesize information from reading and incorporate it into a writing assignment • Argue with the text • Anticipate where an argument or narrative is heading • Suspend information while searching for answers to self-generated questions Academic Literacy Statement:A Statement of Competencies Expected of Students Entering California’s Public Colleges and Universities

8. We can accomplish these goals by WORKING THE READING with our students.

9. Students become stronger writers as we teach writing less and reading more. When we make reading the primary focus of our instruction--with reasoning the second most important--we produce better student writing than if we focused on teaching specific writing principles. California Basic Skills Initiative, Effective Practices Brochure, page 21

10. “Students whose abilities in critical reading and thinking enable them to grasp an argument in another’s text can construct arguments in their own essays. Those who question the text will be more likely to question their own claims. Frequent exposure to a variety of rhetorical strategies in their reading empowers students to experiment with and develop their own rhetorical strategies as writers.” Academic Literacy Statement, pg. 15

11. Why We Need to Actively “Work the Reading” With Our Students Students from Chabot College tell us what they do with the assigned reading.

12. Students from Chabot College Talk about Reading

13. “After watching the video, I recognized that I had spent the first decade of my career calling myself a “writing teacher” and making two assumptions about my students: 1) that they were doing the reading, and 2) that they understood what they read. The video makes clear just how flawed those two assumptions had been.” Katie Hearn, Chabot College, quoted in Basic Skills Initiative, Effective Practices Brochure, pg. 21

14. Writing Problems Are Often Reading Problems

15. One Way to “Work the Reading”—The Text Application Assignment

16. Assignment Scaffolding Students read the essay “The Perfect Picture” outside of class Students write a one-page response to the essay in class Discuss and summarize essay in class Break-up thesis into parts Students write a summary of the essay outside of class Peer review/instructor review summary in class Discuss how to write a photograph description Practice photograph description and write description Practice photograph analysis Complete analysis chart Write photograph analysis Combine all three paragraphs into one essay Conference and Revise Edit

17. Reading and Responding • Read the Essay • Write an initial response to the essay • Why didn’t Thom take the photograph in this situation? Do you think he stopped taking photographs for newspapers altogether after this incident? • What questions would you want to ask Thom were you given the chance to speak with him? How do you think he would answer those questions? • What was Thom’s job at the time of this essay? Did he do his job here?

18. SUMMARIZING

19. Summarizing Three generalizations about summarizing extracted from research: To effectively summarize, students must delete some information, substitute some information, and keep some information. To effectively delete, substitute, and keep information, students must analyze the information at a fairly deep level. Being aware of the explicit structure of information is an aid to summarizing information. Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement, Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, pages 30-32.

20. Four Summarizing Strategies

21. Summarizing Using a Summary Frame Basic Structure for Expository Writing: Author Title Genre Thesis Main Supporting Ideas This Assignment: • Author • Title • Genre • Thesis • How he arrived at thesis (narrative) • Setting, characters, beginning, middle, end

22. Complete Summary Frame • Author: James Alexander Thom • Title: “The Perfect Picture” • Genre: Essay, personal narrative • Narrative: • Thesis: • depictions of human suffering, • in the news (newspapers, TV news, news websites), • are often included to entertain • not to inform.

23. Questions for Further Discussion Why didn’t Thom take the photograph? When do we see human suffering in the news? In what types of other situations would Thom refuse to take a photograph? What is the purpose or goal of the news media? Do you think there are some types of human suffering that Thom would say is acceptable in the news? What is the difference between human suffering that Thom doesn’t think belongs in the news and the human suffering that does belong? What do you think about human suffering in the news?

24. Review Student Sample

25. Assignment Scaffolding Students read the essay “The Perfect Picture” outside of class Students write a one-page response to the essay in class Discuss and summarize essay in class Break-up thesis into parts Students write a summary of the essay outside of class Peer review/instructor review summary in class Discuss how to write a photograph description Practice photograph description and write description Practice photograph analysis Complete analysis chart Write photograph analysis Combine all three paragraphs into one essay Conference and Revise Edit

26. Describe Your Photograph Choose an organizational strategy Evoke the senses Paint a picture Emphasize details that support the thesis Keep your audience in mind Model, “The Loneliness of Rose,” Jon Katz

27. Practice Photograph Analysis

28. Photograph Analysis: “We Do” Complete your group’s analysis chart and share with the class.

29. Assignment Scaffolding Students read the essay “The Perfect Picture” outside of class Students write a one-page response to the essay in class Discuss and summarize essay in class Break-up thesis into parts Students write a summary of the essay outside of class Peer review/instructor review summary in class Discuss how to write a photograph description Practice photograph description and write description Practice photograph analysis Complete analysis chart Write photograph analysis Combine all three paragraphs into one essay Conference and Revise Edit

30. Other Versions of This Assignment

31. Other Versions of This Assignment COMMONCORE.ORG

32. What Skills Does this Assignment Develop? Synthesis Predicting Flexibility in reading and writing Comprehension Reading and writing as a process

33. In what situations will students use these skills? Academic essays Psychology Science Medicine Law Life!

34. EVALUATION