I am both disappointed and amused
about my thought processes while reading about the California State
Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template. Part of
me wishes I had read it before I wrote my course introduction draft, but the
other part of me is pleased to know that I followed the majority of the ideas
listed in the template. It gave me further inspiration for my project, however,
making me all the more eager to work on it.
That all being said, the way the
Assignment Template was laid out was extremely helpful, including a lot of
information in the margins about Common Core prerequisites and how these
different activities help students learn. While it was about Informational
Text, it could easily be applied to literature, primarily young-adult novels.
Due to the fact that young-adult novels try to make a point, inform, or
convince readers to think about the answers to hard questions, many of these guidelines
can be used. So much of these assignments involve critical thinking as well,
which is so important for our young people to know how to do. Not only does it
prepare them for college, but it also prepares them for life. After all,
thinking critically helps keep people from being taken advantage of.
The outlines for writing were also
very helpful because they make sure students are considering the content of
their work while revising, not just their surface grammar, sentence structure,
and punctuation errors. When I was in school, teachers didn’t really have us
consider our content problems, they simply had students peer review for technical
errors. In the case of these assignment templates, they ask the students to ask
themselves about who their audience is and what the purpose of their writing
is. It also attempts to move us away from the standard “one and done” draft
process that we see so often in Middle to High School classrooms. Students need
to feel comfortable writing multiple drafts, because that’s how real writers do
it.
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