Session Descriptions & Materials - Sacramento

Canceled Session: Using Mentor Texts to Give Agency to Students with Jason Burita

We generally believe that logically minded people will follow the lines of reasoning we set forth and come to conclusions generally similar to our own. What's perhaps less intuitive, but equally important for those teaching and learning about public argumentation, however, is that reasonable people often disagree in fundamentally important ways and that more than likely such disagreements stem not from lapses in reason or fallacious logic but from authentic differences in beliefs, worldviews, and assumptions that are easily dismissed as irrationality by the other side of the question. In order address this significant rhetorical concern, this session will feature guided readings of two historical texts (written by environmentalist John Muir and city engineer Marsden Manson) vital to the debate over water rights and the preservation of the natural world in California.

Learn about the power of reflective writing to help us learn and grow. Ma ka hana ka ike; the learning is in the work.

The presentation will focus on the topic “Fostering Language Awareness and Exploration.” The purpose of this presentation will be to discuss ways teachers can support academic language acquisition and development for students. Specifically, it will explore how students acquire academic language through rhetorical analysis. It will also explore how students use newly acquired academic language after identifying a rhetorical purpose for writing. In addition, it will discuss how teachers can place value on the many literacies and strengths students bring to the classroom. Special attention will be given to how ERWC modules are taught to EL students (English Learner) and RFEP students (Reclassified Fluent English Proficient). Best practices and strategies for these students will be explored and illustrated through an interactive workshop portion of the presentation.

Considering the ERWC course learning goal, “value reading and writing for communication, learning, and pleasure,” this session explores the ways in which two ERWC grade 11 modules (The Danger and Power of a Single Story and The Things They Carried) highlight rhetorical power of literature by asking students to create their own narratives in response to mentor texts. Through writing literature in response to literature, students gain new tools for engaging in civil discourse, exploring language and stylistic choices, and expressing individuality and autonomy through language expression. Strategies and activities highlighted in this session include mentor sentences, mind mapping, story-boarding, collaborative discussion, and engaging student agency and choice through Universal Design for Learning. A panel of student writers share how these approaches inspired the to create a writing club on their campus and extend the writing community that they cultivated in their class.

https://bit.ly/morethanastorystories

Kenneth Burke’s pentad—Act, Agent, Scene, Agency, Purpose—is a flexible rhetorical heuristic that leads to useful insights about arguments and issues. Many people learn how to identify these elements in a particular rhetorical situation. However, the real power of the pentad comes in the combinations, what Burke calls the “ratios.” In this session we will apply these ratios first to the origins of ERWC and then to current political issues and texts. Then we will apply this “ratio thinking” in small groups to selected texts and think about how to teach students to use them.

Time to let go and spark student learning with mentor texts not found in the ERWC curriculum. Learn how to guide students by using mentor texts to create student agency in reading and writing. Leave with a pacing guide, grading solutions, writing solutions, revising solutions, and access to a sizable collection of unique mentor texts (and how to use them in the classroom). Learn how to reap the benefits of student autonomy by giving yourself the freedom to guide students toward fulfilling their own academic success. Learn the value of autonomy while looking at the Value of Life module.

This session will show participants how to adapt the ERWC Assignment Template to adopt texts beyond those already included in ERWC modules. Participants will discuss the type of texts that lend themselves to the ERWC "Arc," and how to structure a module using the Assignment Template for both both full-length texts and text sets. This way of structuring rhetorical reading and writing can be used in secondary ELA classrooms. Session attendees should have a culturally relevant text that they would like to teach in mind.

According to the Smarter Balanced Argumentative Performance Task Writing Rubric (Grades 6-12), in order to earn a score of 4, students are expected to provide “thorough and convincing elaboration.” But what does that kind of elaboration look like? And how can we, as teachers, enable students of all language proficiency levels to produce that quality of elaboration purposefully, confidently, and enthusiastically? Participants will explore answers to these questions while engaging in lively collaboration activities designed to prompt the discovery of 19 elaboration techniques that facilitate student self-expression.

This fall, CDE is releasing the new Interim ELPAC, which teachers will be able to administer flexibly throughout the year and for formative assessment purposes. But what will it look like? How can teachers prepare for it? And how can it be used to improve teaching and learning for EL students? This session engages these questions, using examples from a new ERWC-ELD module for middle school. It is led by Dr. Christine Snyder, both the module author and a co-developer of CDE's forthcoming Interim ELPAC Webinar training. Dr. Snyder is a Research Associate on the WestEd team led by Dr. Pam Spycher, a primary author of the ELD Standards and ELA/ELD Framework. Using illustrations from her new ERWC-ELD module, "Growing Up Is...", Dr. Snyder will share with participants insights into Interim ELPAC preparation and how to embed preparation in culturally sustaining, engaging, and Standards-aligned instruction.

To combat the devaluation of students’ cultural resources and identities in traditional educational models, participants will explore strategies to implement autoethnographic writing in the Language, Culture, and Gender ERWC module. Autoethnographic writing can humanize students by honoring their cultural differences and creating opportunities for them to express their lived experiences. Participants will leave this session equipped with the tools to implement an autoethnographic assignment that meets the Language, Culture, and Gender module outcomes; empowers students to explore their own intersections of language, gender, and identity; and allows students to practice adapting their message to a variety of rhetorical situations.