Susannah Sanford McDaniel

TCC Leverenz

Draft final project

Critical Reading and Writing

Essay
In the course of this past semester, I have been conceptualizing how to set up ritualized
practices in my classroom to teach concepts and skills I would like students to know. I do not mean
regular assignments or even organization of the course. I am referring to daily or weekly practices to do
together. One of these strategies was part of my pedagogy presentation, and was adapted from James
Langs Small Teaching. In thinking through predictive and reflective learning practices, every class
period should begin with some sort of reflection on the class before and a prediction of what we will
learn or what we need to learn. Every class should end with a reflection on what was useful, what we
learned, and any questions we still have. Other strategies I have been working on are a recap of every
unit, in terms of the order in which we do things and why, and a review of skills we have learned. Commented [DA1]: Might be an odd question, but is
there an incentive for students to perform well on this
One question that remains, however, is how to practice reading skills in the classroom in a assignment in terms of reflection other than their own
regularized fashion. Students, of course, do not have the same levels of experience or comfort with edification? As I ask it, it seems a weird thing to bring up,
but it might just be one of those you get as much out of it
reading and analyzing, and this is reflected in their writing. Their ability to synthesize, analyze, and as you put into it exercises for students and thus doesnt
utilize what they are reading are directly related with their ability to mimic genre, recognize features of require incentive. I dunno; might be worth thinking about,
form, reproduce genre, and create their own style. Reading skills are most often linked with style in the might not.
FYC classroom. Within teaching about style, we find hints at teaching reading. As this is what was first
available to me, this is where I began both my research and my practical usage in the classroom.

During this past fall semester, I pulled an exercise from Nora Bacons chapter, Style in
Academic Writing, one of our assigned readings in Teaching College Composition. In the exercise,
Bacon pulls three very different examples of academic style, lets students read them, and spends time
thinking through how to achieve different styles, the place of the writer, the subject and verb pairs that
keep the writing clear or influence the feel. I used these same passages with my students and asked
them the same types of questions. They did alright as they became more comfortable with the looser
format of discussion. The most successful passage was the last. A couple of students read the passage
aloud, instead of the silent reading of the previous two passages, and then we discussed the same types
of things we had with the other two. By then, students felt comfortable sharing their thoughts, they
knew what to look for, and they could speak with me with more confidence. Commented [DA2]: Do you think this transitioned into
their own writing? If so, how so? If not, what purposeful ties
Many chapters in Reconnecting Reading & Writing speak of similar exercises, but through could be made on our end to make sure theyre connecting
modelling. Horning and Skomski, in particular, emphasize teachers and professors should first model what they see/read to what they write?

what reading can look like by reading a passage aloud, pausing at intervals to offer up thoughts or
connections the instructor makes to his or her own personal life, work, the world at large, and to other
texts available to the teacher and perhaps some texts the students would know (Skomski 105). Based Commented [DA3]: I like this idea!
on my experience this past semester, this is a practice I need to integrate more into my classroom to
encourage critical reading skills. Students are processing many genres across the course. In the style
exercise I described above, students succeeded most when we read the passage together and they had
the tools to analyze style and effect. If I change some of the classtime to include modelling of reading, I
am certain exercises of the same type would be even more convincing and useful for students.

Works Cited
Bacon, Nora. Style in Academic Writing, The Centrality of Style, edited by Mike Duncan and Star
Medzerian Vanguri, Parlor Press, 2013.

Skomski, Kathleen. First Year Writers: Forward Movement, Backward Progress, Reconnecting Reading
& Writing, edited by Alice S. Horning and Elizabeth W. Kraemer, Parlor Press, 2013, pp. 89-107.

Annotated Bibliography

Almasi, Janice F. Teaching Strategic Process in Reading, forward by Michael Pressley, The Guildford

Press, 2003.

Annotation

Horning, Alice. "Reading, Writing and Digitizing: A Meta-Analysis of Reading Research." Reading

Matrix: An International Online Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, Sept. 2010, pp. 243-270.

In her summative meta-analysis of research studies on reading skills, Horning ends by concluding
students need more instruction and aid all around. Students are not expert readers, even at the college
level or as adult readers, and readers need to know the strategies and techniques for more fully
engaged reading and must actually do real reading of increasingly challenging texts. The survey of
studies proves a bit tedious; in one example, Horning moves through an examination of the ability of the
ACT to measure students reading capabilities. This is a dated example studied before standardized
tests morphed into their most recent iterations. For her conclusions, Horning relies fairly heavily on the
work of Michael Pressley and those with whom he has cowritten.

Horning, Alice and Elizabeth W. Kraemer, editors. Reconnecting Reading & Writing, Parlor Press,

2013.

This book covers a huge range of reading skills, classroom resources, and teaching strategies on the
teaching of reading in the college classroom. Of particular interest are the chapters by Alice Horning
and Kathleen Skomski. Horning gives lists and lists of resources and exercises, though she cites the
other books in which they are found, instead of listing them out. Kathleen Skomski sees reading in
layers and levels, and ends with an idea for an assignment based on career goals and college major, and
a discussion of reading during class time. One strategy that came up across multiple chapters was
reading aloud, particularly the teacher or professor reading aloud and demonstrating the work of
reading to students. This seemed particularly useful.
Authors note:

I am struggling with two things: how to keep the discovery short enough to leave space for the
annotated bib (my original proposal) and a revised syllabus, and source material. Teaching reading skills
does not appear in many books or articles about composition, and I am struggling to marry the two in
research and classroom. I originally proposed an annotated bibliography and a revised syllabus, though I
believe my syllabus may stay as part of my portfolio for the class, leaving this project to be a discovery
with the annotations.

To me, it seems like the discovery part of this essay might help offset the struggles youre having with
finding sources on teaching reading skills. If you would like to shorten it, however, I feel the first
paragraph could mostly be cut from the equation as it deals less with teaching reading and more with
student reflection (though the connection you make is definitely effective). Other than that, I think
youve got a good start here!