California Common Core State Standards Assignment Template

             The CCSS for California outlines the structure in which teachers can help students learn to read and write rhetorically. I had noticed that this happens in precise steps where there is critical reading and discussing of a certain text takes place before the writing process begins. Before students jump right in to reading the actual text though, the article talks about a type of warm-up or “prereading.” This includes including the student’s point of view and connecting their personal world to that of the texts. This can be seen as discussing key concepts that may lie ahead in the reading, describing specific words/phrases, surveying the text, and making predictions based on the survey. I think that it is incredibly important to include this prereading in a classroom setting as it is VERY difficult for students to do this work alone. And this prepping to read is vital in order to get them in the right headspace in order to delve into the assigned reading. This maximizes the amount of information students might gain from reading the text.

As a teacher, it is important to constantly ask precise questions that encourage understanding and acknowledgement of the structure. By doing exercises that point out what good writing looks like, either literary or educational, they will gain understanding of what their writing should look like. This helps them transfer their reading into writing. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise of reading “with the grain” the “against the grain” as it pushes students to look at the text from different point of views. Postreading is an often overlooked necessity in the classroom. This step in the reading process ensures students remember what they had read and reword it into their own understanding as they summarize, respond, and discuss the text.

                To write rhetorically, I think it is important to remind students of their emotional ties that they had formed to the reading in order to make this writing process more personal to them. The first draft is where students really find their voice and discover what is worth discussing in their eyes so it is important to me not to make this first draft graded based on grammar and structure. For the remaining drafts, it gives them an opportunity to practice revising and editing their own writing as they transfer and build on their original ideas.