INTERLINK Curriculum Guide
Course Details RW3
In writing, students learn how to structure a full-length essay with a good introduction, support and conclusion using organizational principles such as order of importance, chronological order, cause and effect and comparison and contrast. Students are guided to aim for clarity and persuasiveness in their writing and learn strategies to help attain these goals. Pre-writing strategies and outlining are worked on. In reading, they learn to negotiate their way through texts without getting bogged down in difficult passages or becoming frustrated with unfamiliar words. Students practice drawing conclusions and recognizing inferences in prose passages. Attention is given to figuring out the meaning of new words from context and through word analysis.
Benchmarks of Completion of Level 3:
Demonstrate ability
to:
a. understand everyday prose
b. write a comprehensible, well-organized
essay addressing an issue (in class)
Core Projects
for RW 3
RW 3 Portfolio Project: Exploratory Essays
Project Summary: Beginning at this level, students work on more formal, abstract, academic writing. The central idea for these essays is for students to write about areas of interest (which can include family, friend, past experiences, future plans, ideas or reactions to stories in the news or virtually anything else) in formally structured essays. In this project, students have an opportunity to express their views on a variety of topics, discuss things which interest them or have influenced them, and react to events and ideas. They should be making the transition from just being able to express themselves in writing to manipulating language for special effects, which is the essence of style. Attention is paid not to merely stating a thing, but to stating it effectively. The portfolio would contain the whole collection of letters as well as revisions.
The development of writing skills is primarily a process of growth rather than addition of new elements. That is to say, students do not so much learn different skills at different levels as continue to improve skills already present albeit in only a rudimentary or underdeveloped form. Skills such as paraphrasing and writing to an audience are not absent in beginning level writing, but become more refined and sophisticated in higher levels. It is important to remember that the teacher's job is not to "teach" skills, but rather to help students acquire them. Some of the skills worked on in the course of this project are listed below (the list is not comprehensive) to help teachers make the best use of this project.
Skills
practiced in this level:
·Prewriting strategies: For almost everyone,
the hardest part of writing is getting started, and familiarity with a number
of prewriting strategies is very helpful at this point. Free-writing, brainstorming,
peer discussions, dramatic dialogs, and mapping and clustering of ideas may be
experimented with so that students have a variety of tools with which to approach
a writing assignment.
· Outlining: Outlining is not only a useful prewriting
technique but a necessary organizing tool for longer prose compositions. Outlining
the structure of a composition before beginning the actual writing can save students
a great deal of time and help avoid rambling, unfocused writing. Teachers should
keep in mind that while outlining is a useful tool, our goal is not to produce
good outliners but good writers.
· Using different writing modes: Students
should not be required to write separate essays using descriptive, narrative,
expositive or argumentative modes, but awareness of these forms can help their
writing.
· Writing mechanics: Not only should students be expressing
themselves with greater grammatical accuracy but the sophistication and complexity
of their language should also be increasing.
·Supporting details and
arguments: Since students are expressing opinions or point of view in these essays,
they should be adequately supporting what they say with examples, evidence and
details.
·Revision: Students should already know how to proofread and
correct errors pointed out to them. At this level, revision means looking at a
composition critically and finding better ways to express ideas. Correctness is
not the only criterion about which students should be concerned, but also effectiveness
and elegance should also be taken into account.
· Research: Students
should be using outside resources to learn more about the subjects they are writing
about and to find support for their theses.
· Improvement in skills
listed for previous levels
RW 3 Independent Reading Project
The specific activities and materials for this project are determined by teacher and students, but the description of the parameters and goals of the project should be carefully reviewed.
The specific activities and materials for this project are determined by teacher and students, but the description of the parameters and goals of the project should be carefully reviewed.