Bridging Reading and Writing

1. Bridging Reading and Writing Dr. Angela Gunter WKU Writing Project 2012

2. Classic literature • Novels • Stories • Text books • Primary documents • Magazines • Newspapers We READING!

3. CCSS Appendix A

4. The clear, alarming picture that emerges is that while reading demands of college, workforce training programs, and citizenship have held steady or risen over the past fifty years, K-12 texts have become less demanding.

5. K-12 reading texts have trended downward in difficulty in the last half century. Only 30% who enrolled in remedial courses went on to graduate; 69% who took no remedial courses graduated (1992-2000) Average sentence length and vocabulary in reading textbooks have decreased. • The percent of proficient adult readers has decreased since 1992 by 15 % • The percent of adults who read literature has decreased by 7.3% • The percent of adults who read any book had decreased by 7% • In 18-24 year olds, decrease was 28% A 350L gap between difficulty of end-of-high school and college texts—a gap larger than the Lexile between 4th and 8th grade. Students are given much in-class assistance with texts that are already not difficult. If students have trouble reading expository texts, they generally read less—turn to less text dense sources such as videos, podcasts, tweets, etc. Not enough expository reading assigned in K-12; Majority of expository in college/workplace

6. A turning away from complex texts is likely to lead to a general impoverishment of knowledge, which, because knowledge is intimately linked with reading comprehension ability, will accelerate the decline in the ability to comprehend complex texts and the decline in the richness of text itself.

7. Levels of meaning, purpose, structure, language conventionality and clarity, knowledge demands Text complexity, word and sentence length, text cohesion: Lexile Complexity of task assigned and questions posed Motivation, knowledge, experience

8. LexileScores

10. Levels of meaning, purpose, structure, language conventionality and clarity, knowledge demands Text complexity, word and sentence length, text cohesion: Lexile Complexity of task assigned and questions posed Motivation, knowledge, experience

11. Opinion (K-5) or Argument (6-12) • Informative/Explanatory • Narrative • Fiction • Nonfiction Begin with the task Begin with the text Transition from Reading to Writing

12. Expectancy Theory: “The strength of a tendency to act in a certain way depends on the strength of an expectancy that the act will be followed by a given consequence (or outcome) and on the value or attractiveness (or valence) of that consequence to the individual” Lawler, 1994, p. 54 Motivation

13. http://dchsaplanguage.wikispaces.com/

14. Have students create their own essential questions, wikipage or blog with images, videos, and annotated links to articles. Use the same scoring guide to write their own argument. • Conduct original research with social media. • Publish in a medium that is appropriate—enter the public conversation. • Ideas from this esteemed group of colleagues? Next Steps

15. Student Writing Contest • Stephanie Kirk Classroom Learning Award • http://www.kcte.org/ KCTE/LA Writing Contest