Assignment Template for ELA

The assignment template was a pretty thorough bit of writing. I was impressed with how it systematically seemed to move students from a contemplation of reading, through the actual reading itself and into writing about the reading. Along those same lines, for some reason it had never occurred to me that writing for understanding and learning still constituted effective academic writing, which this method of reading and writing definitely indicates and supports. I especially appreciated the authors’ efforts to include direct support from the CCSS for every aspect of their reading and writing strategy. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the template to me, however, is the “Connecting Reading to Writing” section. This brief section lays out what I feel is a very easy to follow and seemingly very effective means of helping any reader come to a better understanding of how they can write about whatever it is they are reading, and I wish that I had had some of these strategies taught to me in grade school rather than having to find them on my own.

                My only real concern with the template is that it seems to focus primarily on reading informative text rather than focusing on literary text. While all of the ideas presented in the article would be effective in understanding literature, they do seem to lack guidance in how a reader should go about taking what seems to be just a story about a given set of characters and translating that into meaningful arguments and ideas. I would like to see some discussion on helping students come to understand how characters can represent ideas by how they interact with the circumstances and other characters provided within a literary narrative and various other aspects of such works and how they move from narrative to thought and argument.

                For the most part, however, I was very impressed with what the template provided and am actually quite grateful because it provides me with an effective means of helping students move through the reading aspects and into writing about the reading itself. Thus improving reading comprehension and writing skills.