California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template

The assignment template “for helping students read, comprehend, and respond to texts” was an informative overview of key concepts that should be covered as we teach our students to engage the reading process.

As I did an initial scan of the article, I wondered if the template, applied as a whole, would be a little overwhelming to try to cover within every reading/writing unit. While each stage of the reading/writing process, as it was laid out, seemed to be quite extensive and thorough (a definite upside of the template), I could also see it being quite a slog to get students through. However, the overview of the process, outlined at the beginning of the article, is what really changed my mind. I think the template makes a lot of structural sense. It covers parts of the reading/writing process that it is easy for a teacher to forget (especially in the pre-reading and post-reading sections). What the template lacks in conciseness it makes up for in comprehensiveness.

If I were to apply this template as a teacher, I think I would present only the basic outline of the process to my students at the beginning of the course without providing a ton of detail up front. Then, as we work through our first reading/writing assignment, I would help them flesh out what each of the steps of the outline looks like as it applies to our assignment, providing as many details and different approaches and resources as they find helpful. I could see this first assignment taking some time as the students slowly become familiar with each of the steps in the writing and reading process. As we move into our second reading/writing assignment, I would then start letting them make choices about how they want to engage each of the steps of the process (e.g. choosing between mapping the organizational structure or descriptive outlining when considering the structure of the text). Slowly, as we continue working through units, the students would become more familiar with the template and be able to engage each step of the process however they find works best for them.