Navigating Professional Development for Teaching Integrated Reading and Writing Dr. David C. Caverly, Erika K. Nielson, & Ren VanderLind Texas State University CRLA Conference – St Paul, MN November 6, 2014

Our Previous Training and Experience

The First Semester: Professional Development and the Informal Learning Community

Moving Forward: Revising the Course and Developing the Mentoring Model

IRW in Fall 2013: Four genres: narration, exposition, persuasion, and argumentation. Instructors used common grading scheme, but designed own assignments and selected own course readings. No common themes across classes beyond the narrative unit. No common midterm or final exams. Ended up oriented more towards writing instruction than reading instruction. IRW in Fall 2014: Inspired by Rosenblatt’s (2013) transactional theory of reading and writing. Three genres: exposition, narration, and argumentation. Instructors using common grading scheme, using some similar elements in assignments, but still selecting own course readings. Some common themes across some classes (e.g., culture). Common exams designed collaboratively. Striving for emphasis on building metacognition and self-regulation. Striving for equal representation of reading and writing instruction.

Fall 2014 Mentoring Model: Three new instructors from different backgrounds were brought in to teach the course: two from a composition background and one from an Adult Basic Education background. Mentees received pre-service training in the form of three two-hour meetings to discuss the frameworks of the course and course objectives. Mentor facilitates weekly hour-long instructor meetings to provide just-in-time supports. These meetings are structured as a learning community for sharing ideas, successes, and challenges while receiving support and input from all instructors. Mentor built an instructor website for sharing resources, meeting notes, and other materials. Each mentee is observed twice a semester and provided with feedback. As needed, informal mentoring sessions take place with one mentee. The model is flexible to address everyone’s instructional needs and will continue to evolve over the rest of the academic year.

Students’ Changing Perceptions about IRW

Student Comments Pre: “The course is helpful and will help me build my skills.” Post: “This class has truly helped me better myself in reading and writing by make my educational weakness stronger. This class has destroyed my weaknesses and has made my skills stronger in reading and writing.” “I think, definitely, it’s something to look into, like unfortunately I was like kind of forced to be in this class, but if I had the opportunity to better strengthen myself then I definitely would and I’d recommend it to other people too because this class didn’t just help me with this class like it helped me with my English class it helped me with my Fine Arts class writing my critiques and stuff, I mean not really math but being able to read math and analyze the questions we had to do that’s all reading being able to understand. This class was really helpful. It really was.” – Kaitlyn, Spring 2014

Student Comments Pre: “Integrated reading and writing is like learning a new sport because with practice you will get to where you have to be.” Post: “Reading and writing are like your best friend because they are like two different things but have a lot in common.” “Well, it’s remedial but I wouldn’t really call it remedial. It’s a class that will teach us how to get to the college level for reading and we take any reading courses, like psychology and kinda like stuff like that. So this class this is kinda preparing us for those classes, teaching us techniques that are going to be useful whenever we have them…Well, I feel like now, with more resources, more knowledge from what I have learned, I kinda feel more confident writing a paper and finding information because I know how to cite properly, I know where to find resources and that’s something I didn’t know before this class. I feel like this class really helped, showing me like how to find those resources for a paper or a reading.” – Lindsey, Spring 2014