--PRESENTED BY THE SAN ANTONIO WRITING PROJECT (UTSA) DR. L. LENNIE IRVIN, SAN ANTONIO COLLEGE San Antonio Writing Project | March 26, 2011 Super Saturday Super Saturday on College Readiness in Writing Adjusting to a New Alignment: STAAR, EOC, and CCRS

Today’s Agenda Welcome Quick Write Planning OUR OWN curriculum for college-readiness What is the “new alignment?”: STAAR, EOC, and CCRS Teaching Demonstrations—lessons geared toward college readiness

Quick Write Topic: Close your eyes, and think about you in the first semester of your freshman year. Describe what you were like as a student and a writer.

Discovering a Set of Holistic Learning Objectives for a College-Readiness Curriculum

Experiment Part 1— Can we discover the characteristics of poorly prepared writers? (those judged as “not ready” for college-level writing) What can we see IN THEIR WRITING that “defines” them as “not ready?”

Characteristics of Poorly Prepared Writers --

Experiment—Part 2 Can we look at college writing assignments and see what writers should be prepared to do:  What common tasks do these writing assignments ask students to do?  What common sorts of skills or strategies do students need to employ to perform these tasks?

Characteristics of College Writing Assignments --

College Writing Assignments are “complex literacy tasks” “What are usually called 'writing assignments' in college might more accurately be called 'literacy tasks' because they require much more than the ability to construct correct sentences or compose neatly organized paragraphs with topic sentences. […] Projects calling for high levels of critical literacy in college typically require knowledge of research skills, ability to read complex texts, understanding of key disciplinary concepts, and strategies for synthesizing, analyzing, and responding critically to new information, usually within a limited time frame” (3-4). Carroll, Lee Ann. Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2002.

College Writing Requires knowledge of research skills, ability to read complex texts, understanding of key disciplinary concepts, and strategies for synthesizing, analyzing, and responding critically to new information, usually within a limited time frame.

Argument: A key feature of college writing “Far more often--like every other week--you will be asked to analyze the reading, to make a worthwhile claim about it that is not obvious (state a thesis means almost the same thing), to support your claim with good reasons, all in four or five pages that are organized to present an argument. (If you did that in high school, write your teachers a letter of gratitude.)” (“Some crucial differences between high school and college writing”) Williams, Joseph and Lawrence McEnerny. “Writing in College.” University of Chicago Writing Program.

Based, then, on 1) the characteristics that typify student writing that is “not ready” and 2) the kinds of assignments students may typically have to write in college, what then should our curriculum be? What general goals and objectives should we have for our teaching of writing for pre-college or developmental writing students?

Goals and Objectives of a CCR Curriculum --

Time for a ten minute break

Understanding the New Alignment Between CCRS, STAAR and EOCs

Getting Under the Hood To understand this new alignment, it is important to see exactly how this alignment was made

P-16 College Readiness & Success Plan Nov. 2006

Eight Objectives of P-16 CR Plan Objective 1 Define standards and expectations for college readiness for the state that address what students must know and be able to do to succeed in entry-level college/university courses and in the skilled workforce. (completed Dec. 2008) Objective 2 Align exit-level assessments of public education with entry- level expectations of higher education and the skilled workforce. (begin

CRS-TEKS Alignment Project (May 2009) Phase I (May 2009)  analyzed the work of Phase II of the CCRS Initiative “gap analysis”  reviewed descriptions of what it means to be college ready  compared identified critical college readiness skills to national college-readiness skills (e.g. SAT, ACT, etc.)  developed performance expectations associated with each critical college-readiness skill for English III and Algebra II

Phase I Example

Phase II CCRS-TEKS Alignment Validate the performance expectations (Nov. 2009)  in terms of the difficulty of the content and quality of student response as associated with each critical college readiness skill identified for English III and Algebra II  These performance expectations informed the development of the assessments (and thus will impact everything else from instructional materials, to professional development, to teacher preparation)

Phase II Example

TEKS STAAR TEKS  Selected TEKS stressed in STAAR as “Readiness” or “Supporting” Standards  A New Model for Assessment A New Model for Assessment STAAR English III “Reporting Categories”  Engl III Blueprint Engl III Blueprint  English III Test Design Schematic English III Test Design Schematic

Resource Links Related to the New Alignment of TEKS, STAAR, EOC, and CCRS P-16 College-Readiness and Success Strategic Action Plan Website Report TEA End of Course Assessment Site TEA STAAR Resource Page TEKS for ELA English III STAAR Assessment The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) A New Assessment Model Crossing2College: A Resource on College Readiness in Writing from the San Antonio Writing Project

Crossing2College: A Resource for Preparing College- Ready Writers

“The readiness is all.”