Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment

Previous to reading this text I did not think that there were so many things that went into assigning a reading to students. While reading the pre-reading suggestions I knew that all of those things are important but in order for students to think about those things you must tell them. Often times students are not going to automatically be making predictions and asking questions about the text and as a teacher, it will be my job to guide them through those pre-reading exercises. I believe that one benefit to doing the pre-reading exercises with students would be that it could help students garner interest in the text because they would be thinking critically about it.

The next section on reading the text is a great resource. As a teacher, I cannot assume that my students will automatically look for the correct information if I ask them to read and look for certain things within the text. Therefore, there are some great guiding questions to have students look for if I want them to analyze the text a certain way. One of the suggestions that I enjoyed the most was "Considering the Structure of the Text" because it makes the students think about why the author outlined the text that certain way and what that can mean for the overall message of the text. Another one of the suggestions I liked was "Analyzing Stylistic Choices." The stylistic choices that are used by authors can help students understand the choices that an author used to inform or persuade them.

The final section on reading was the post reading. By teaching students about reading in this way it keeps them engaged throughout the entire process. I am also in an 8th-grade classroom right now and we are focusing on logos, ethos, and pathos within their persuasive writing. It would be really beneficial to have them identify those aspects in another person's writing. This could also help with modeling because then they can see examples of those persuasive techniques in someone else's writing and they could then implement that into their own writing.

The next section outlined writing the same way that it did reading but I thought that I connected the most to the reading suggestions so I focused on those. One aspect of the text that I really enjoyed was the CCSS that were outlined to the left. This helps me as a future teacher learn more and see how simple it can be to implement them into my lesson planning.