Bridging Reading and Writing

Dr. Angela Gunter

WKU Writing Project 2012

We READING!

Classic literature Novels Stories Text books Primary documents Magazines Newspapers

CCSS Appendix A

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.

K-12 reading texts have trended downward in difficulty in the last half century.

Average sentence length and vocabulary in reading textbooks have decreased.

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.

Not enough expository reading assigned in K-12; Majority of expository in college/workplace

Only 30% who enrolled in remedial courses went on to graduate; 69% who took no remedial courses graduated

(1992-2000)

•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%

If students have trouble reading expository texts, they generally read less—turn to less text dense sources such as videos, podcasts, tweets, etc.

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.

Levels of meaning, purpose, structure, language conventionality and clarity, knowledge demands

Text complexity, word and sentence length, text cohesion: Lexile

Motivation, knowledge, experienceComplexity of task assigned and questions posed

Lexile Scores

Levels of meaning, purpose, structure, language conventionality and clarity, knowledge demands

Text complexity, word and sentence length, text cohesion: Lexile

Motivation, knowledge, experienceComplexity of task assigned and questions posed

Transition from Reading to Writing

• Opinion (K-5) or Argument (6-12)• Informative/Explanatory• Narrative

• Fiction• Nonfiction

Begin with the task

Begin with the text

Motivation

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

http://dchsaplanguage.wikispaces.com/

Next Steps

• 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?

KCTE/LA Writing Contest

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