California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template

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When reading this week’s assignment, I was very drawn to the section that discusses the benefits of annotating a text. I was fully aware that annotating a text benefited readers’ understanding, but only really because that is what high school teachers and college professors have told me. The section, beginning on page 10, suggests that teachers encourage students to read the paper twice through. The first time, read “towards the grain” and agree with what the author is saying. Make note of things that you enjoy or agree with and things that make sense. The second time through, disagree with what the author is saying and read “against the grain.” I found this section particularly interesting because my goal is to teach grades 11 and 12. Common Core State Standards for these grade levels include a focus on the integration of knowledge or ideas into text. I will need to make sure that my students are capable of reading a text, identifying and understand the information presented, and decide if it is agreeable or disagreeable. I think that this article’s approach to annotating text would work well to help students be able to identify information in a text, and would also work well hand-in-hand with class discussions about the text.

I was also very intrigued by Appendix B, Formative Assessment Strategies. I like the idea of thinking about formative assessment answering the three listed questions; Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next? The article presents this idea with a chart of teacher and student responses to these three questions. I think this is a really simple and effective way to start thinking about formative assessment goals in a lesson.

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