Monday, March 24, 2014

Designing whole class reading/writing inquiries from scratch

Over the coming week I'm hoping to create two thematic inquiry-based Reading/Writing units for a college preparation level course (good luck, me?). I need to remind myself of the parameters and goals of the project, as I get lost in the rabbit holes of the internets...

Products needed for each unit:

1. a one-page inquiry prompt that will describe

  • an open-ended inquiry (question) to resolve 
  • an authentic role for students in the inquiry
  • an overview of the contents of the reading 
  • an overview of the writing task

2. a text set of readings embracing multiple points of view, including:

  • short non-fiction selections from the local, state and national media
  • medium-length non-fiction selections from the local, state and national media
  • short selection from a college textbook
  • technical material 
  • visual text (especially charts and graphs) 
  • personal narrative(s)?
  • poem?
3. support materials for the writing task, including:
  • description of the assignment
  • information about the writing mode
  • information about the writing process
  • models or samples in the mode