Reaching College Readiness (Fall 2009)

INTEGRATIVE ASSIGNMENT TEMPLATE

Program or course(s): English 99
Instructor(s): Lynn Dunlap Academic period: Fall 09

PART I: INTEGRATIVE ASSIGNMENT

Overarching understanding goal(s) or throughline(s)

 Students will develop an understanding of the characteristics (attitudes and actions) that
lead to successful learning and apply it to their performance in the course and to their
chosen program or academic majors.
Generative topic(s)
• Relevant to students and society • Central to one or more disciplines or areas of expertise
• Accessible through multiple means • Connected to other topics taught
 What are some of the challenges learners encounter?
 What are the characteristics that help them meet these challenges?
 What are the characteristics of people who are successful in a particular field?
Key understanding-based assignment
What will we ask our students to do to develop and demonstrate their understanding?
• Aimed at targeted concepts, methods, and skills
• Requires thinking with and about novel content
• Builds and integrates understanding
The final project comes as the culmination of a series of assignments:
 Students will first identify their own learning goals for reading and for writing, based on
a pair of inventories, one of the skills used in active reading and one of skills used in the
writing process.
 Based on a set of readings, which students annotate and discuss, each student will write
paragraphs that (a) identify key characteristics that enabled people to overcome
challenges to their learning and (b) characteristics of successful learners as identified by
some current research.
 The final project asks students to interview someone in their program or major—a
professor or someone in the profession—and do library/internet research to determine
the critical reading, writing, and analytical skills that successful professionals need in their
chosen field. They write the results of their analysis in a formal essay that uses
supporting evidence from the interview and from one or more academic or professional
journals or websites.

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 Reaching College Readiness (Fall 2009)

College Readiness Discipline #1: Discipline #2: Selected

Developmental English from the students’ intended
program or major
Goals Understanding goals Understanding goals
• Develop cognitive strategies • Focus on a few key • Focus on a few key
• Advance academic knowledge understandings understandings
and skill • Clear, explicit, and shared • Clear, explicit, and shared
• Foster academic behavior • Capture dimensions of • Capture dimensions of
• Advance understanding of disciplinary understanding disciplinary understanding
college culture • Address learning challenges • Address learning challenges

 The key cognitive Students should be able to: Students should be able to:
strategies include open-  Write a well-organized  Demonstrate an
mindedness, analysis, and explanatory essay, that is, understanding of the kinds
the ability to support their one that is organized on the of key cognitive and
conclusions with reasoning basis of a unifying thesis academic skills and
and evidence. statement and developed behaviors that are
 Both careful reading and with clear reasoning and expected in their field of
academic writing are convincing evidence from interest, whether
necessary for completing multiple sources. professional-technical or
the assignment. Students  Control an effective process academic.
are also synthesizing the to develop the essay (pre-  Demonstrate an awareness
material they have been writing strategies, including of the kinds of resources
reading and analyzing all research, drafting, (both print and internet)
quarter. Students will also reviewing, revising, and available for continued
learn the kinds of academic editing). professional and
knowledge and skills  Analyze information from intellectual development in
valued in their chosen various sources, including their studies and
fields. readings and interviews, and professions.
 The assignment introduces synthesize it into a  Demonstrate an
how to arrange for and meaningful discussion. understanding of the
conduct a formal interview  Recognize, read, and standards of
and to research databases comprehend academic professionalism
and professional and/or professional writing. appropriate to their
organizations for the chosen field, both in the
variety of resources classroom and workplace.
available to professionals.
Assessment strategy
• Targets understanding goals • Based on explicit criteria
• By self, peer, and teacher • Offers informative feedback
 Students use peer reviews to plan and develop their essays and write reflections about
each assignment.
 The final essay is evaluated in terms of structure and organization, strength of its
explanation (reasoning and evidence), and control of prose.
 In addition, students submit a final portfolio of all their work for the quarter and write a
final reflection that discusses their learning, as evidenced in all of the writing, including
the final essay.

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 Reaching College Readiness Integrative Assignment Template (Fall 2009)

PART II: TEACHERS’ REFLECTIONS

Note: You may print copies of this page for each member of your team to complete, or
compile people’s comments on one page.

With respect to this topic and related assignments, I used to think…

When I first started teaching English 99 three years ago, I thought it mattered most to
introduce students to a variety of organizations for paragraphs and essays. Other course
materials that I examined included practice in different modes, for example, paragraphs
of examples or comparisons, essays that explain and that argue.

But now I think...

I have come to realize (from this and other coursework) that emphasizing structure
communicates to students that controlling structure is the major goal in college writing
when in fact, for most of their coursework the major concern is the quality of thinking
and evidence. This does not mean that control of organization and prose doesn’t matter,
just that the thinking must be central. As a result, the course now begins with an intense
emphasis on critical reading and an explicit focus on the kinds of analysis we bring to
bear as we read.

With respect to students’ work on this topic and related assignments, I used to think…

I used to think students were capable of good, solid intellectual work even if their writing
skills were “rough.” I believed that students could (and would) be able to control errors
better once their thinking was clear—and once they had a compelling reason to take the
necessary steps for control.

But now I think...

This set of sequenced assignments has convinced me more than ever that this basic
assumption is correct. This term, more of the students enrolled in my class completed all
of the work and improved their ability to control their writing. Furthermore, toward the
end of the quarter with the last assignment, just when most students seem to “run out of
gas” and struggle to complete, students in this class were energized. They were able to
conduct interviews and library research and develop their 500 word essay in a short turn
around time.

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 Reaching College Readiness Integrative Assignment Template (Fall 2009)
PART III: STUDENTS’ REFLECTIONS ABOUT DOING THIS ASSIGNMENT (OPTIONAL)
In their mid-quarter reflections students were asked to write a well-developed paragraph that explained one
major way that their writing process had changed to their benefit. Over half of the class specifically discussed
changes in their approach to reading, both in terms of annotating, rereading, and using specific textual
evidence from readings in their writing. In their final essays, students identified the expectations for continued
reading in their fields. Of the 25 students enrolled, 13 were in professional-technical fields, and these students,
were impressed to find—and read—professional publications relevant to their chosen careers. During reviews,
most brought in the results of their searches and interviews and pointed out how much they would be expected
to continue to read and research once they had completed their degrees.

Students did not submit a reflection on the final essay assignment. Instead, they wrote a reflection on their
learning for the whole quarter. Although they did not directly address the final assignment, I have included a
few comments that are typical of the students’ sense of the work of the quarter.

 A student plans to enter a dental hygiene program noted that writing had “always been a
struggle” because she didn’t “like to sit down and focus on writing a paper over a long
period of time.” She described specific changes in her control of structure and
development, based, as she argued, on changes in her approach to reading and peer
review. She wrote: “One of the main writing processes I learned that is vital to a
successful paper is rereading articles at least two or three times. This helped me gain a
better understanding of the article and made it easier for me to answer the prompt. . . .
Taking the time to comprehend the reading by taking notes underlining, and high-
lighting has helped me begin the next step to my writing process.
 A student from the automotive tech program wrote of the difficulty of learning to
annotate texts: “This was very hard for me because I was always told not to mark up
your books and to keep them nice for the next person.” Learning to read carefully and
annotate helped him considerably: “That way we for sure had the stuff we would need
for essay or report.”
 A pre-nursing student explained that in high school she was “not enthusiastic about
academic assignments” and, quite frankly, “lacked the discipline and focus required to
develop adequate writing skills.” In the process of explaining her growth during the
quarter, she found that, at the beginning, she even “found it hard to interpret the
instructions for an assignment.” She described that her ability to control her papers
developed from organization, peer reviews that helped her to detach from her paper, and
reading her own work aloud. She concludes: “In a successful life, education is a constant.
Improving my writing skills in English 99 has demonstrated that there will always be a
situation where I will need these skills. I now know the value of constant improvement
and that there are still many things that I can and will continue to improve on. Thanks to
my new outlook on education, I am excited to make these improvements. I look forward
to the future, and the opportunity to continue learning.
 A student who intends to become a CPA wrote of his transformation from believing
himself “an adequate college level writer” to one who has learned more than he imagined
he would: “I ended up starting with average writing skills, to learning more about the
writing process that would make my papers better, and now I plan for what I want from
myself after this class ends.” These goals for his future include changing his approach to
starting essays (not jump starting) and becoming a better analyst/critical thinker. As he
notes, “Analyzing evidence for my audience’s benefit will help me in my future as a
financial analyst and it could even take me somewhere as a writer.”

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