admin Blog, Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Pedagogies, English Language Development, Middle School Modules, Modules and Minis

Extending the Pipeline: The ERWC-ELD Middle School Curriculum

By Robby Ching and Debra Boggs

  • Should technology be used as a solution to problems in nature?
  • What are some dangers of the metaverse, especially for young people?
  • What are the stories only I can tell the world? 
  • How is plastic pollution affecting us and our future as individuals, communities, and globally?
  • What is the role of a citizen in addressing the wrongs of their government? 
  • How can words and images work together to communicate information or tell a story?
  • How can stories help us deal with the problems we are facing?

These are a few of the compelling questions that students grapple with as they read, discuss, and view the texts that form the basis for the new ERWC-ELD middle school modules. The modules guide students in reading complex texts across a range of genres, including novels, memoirs, graphic novels, TED Talks, interviews, and articles.

These modules are being rolled out on June 23 at the ERWC Literacy Conference in Long Beach. After that, they will be available to teachers across the state who have participated in professional learning to guide their implementation.

These modules implement the vision of the California Framework for English Language Arts (ELA) and English Language Development (ELD) and support teachers in creating instruction that meets the California Common Core Standards (CCCS) and the California ELD Standards. The modules are designed for ELA with Integrated ELD classes linked to Designated ELD classes but are adaptable for ELA only or ELD only classes. They are also intended to be customized depending on the teaching situation and the place students are in their literacy development.

The modules include whole books and shorter texts that raise complex issues and employ complex language. Recognizing that students require guidance and support as they learn to make meaning of these texts, module writers have built in a variety of scaffolds to ensure that all students, including English learner (EL) students, build their reading stamina and productively with the texts that are central to the modules. Students practice applying the strategies of expert readers to understand and analyze these texts and then create texts of their own, producing many of the genres they have experienced as readers. They collaborate to produce a TED Talk, write a micro-memoir, produce a slide show with presenter notes, deliver a speech at a climate summit, and create an infographic.

The language-focused activities in the modules foster English Learner (EL) and Multilingual Learner (ML) students’ understanding of how English works at the word, phrase, clause, and text level while supporting disciplinary literacy growth for all students. The language-focused instruction is offered in the context of the texts students are reading as they participate in engaging and collaborative activities. Many activities implement high-impact strategies that have been shown to be especially effective in this literacy development, building students’ awareness of how writers and presenters make choices about the language they use depending on who their intended audience is and how they hope to impact that audience.

Analyzing Mentor Texts

As they experience these modules, middle school students are introduced to the foundation of a rhetorical approach to reading, writing, and language. As part of this approach, in each module, students analyze mentor texts that model the form, the rhetorical strategies, and the language required by the culminating task. During this analysis of mentor texts, students develop a shared understanding of what is required for a specific kind of text to be successful. The teacher provides or they work together to create success criteria they can use to guide their drafting, and which can be used for peer feedback as well as grading.

Although each module reflects the expertise of its individual writers, they take a common pedagogical approach reflected in “Essential Pedagogies for Integrated and Designated English Language Development in ERWC,” available in the ERWC Online Community. Best practices for English Language Development suggest that students learn best by collaborating with other students, an understanding reflected in the California ELD Standards. The ERWC-ELD middle school curriculum assumes student-centered classrooms where students are constantly interacting with each other around the texts and tasks of the modules.

These modules do not make up an entire curriculum.  Including assignment sequences from textbooks or other sources will be needed to create a full year-long curriculum. But the rhetorical approach embedded in these modules enables middle school teachers to apply a similar approach to all the texts they teach. The High Impact Strategies Toolkit, available on the home page of the ERWC online community, provides a rich source of proven protocols to craft instruction, following the full ERWC arc from the professional text to the student text, and from rhetorical reading to rhetorical writing.

Experiencing these ERWC-ELD modules in middle school invites students to cross the threshold to becoming rhetorical readers and writers as they discover that writers create texts in particular contexts, for particular audiences to achieve particular purposes. These students will leave middle school having acquired a portfolio of reading and writing strategies to apply in their high school ERWC classes, in other academic classes, and in the wider world.

Works Cited

California Department of Education, California Common Core State Standards: English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Sacramento, CA: Adopted by California State Board of Education August 2010 and modified March 2013.

California Department of Education (CDE), California English Language Development Standards: Kindergarten Through Grade 12. Sacramento, CA: Adopted by California State Board of Education November 2012, CDE 2014.

Fletcher, J. (2015). Teaching arguments: Rhetorical comprehension, critique, and response. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

The Expository Reading and Writing Course, 3rd ed. (2019). California State University Press. Long Beach CA.

–Katz, M., Graff, N., Unrau, N., Crisco, G., and Fletcher, J. “The Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC) Theoretical Foundations for Reading and Writing Rhetorically” (2020).

–Ching, R., (2021). “Essential Pedagogies for Integrated and Designated English Language Development in ERWC.”

— Arellano A., Ching, R., Boggs, D., and Spycher, P. (2021) “The High Impact Strategies Toolkit to Support Students in ERWC Classrooms” in The Expository Reading and Writing Course (3.0). California State University Press. Long Beach CA.

About the Author:

Debra Boggs is a retired educator. She taught high school English and worked as a school and county office administrator. She is a member of the ERWC Steering Committee and part of the leadership team that created ERWC-ELD modules for grades 9-12. She is also currently a member of the team that created the new ERWC-ELD middle school modules for grades 6-8. 

Roberta Ching is a Professor Emerita in English at California State University, Sacramento. She coordinated the English as a Second Language program at CSUS before becoming chair of the Learning Skills Department. She was a member of the original 12th Grade Task Force and is currently a member of the team that created the new ERWC-ELD middle school modules for grades 6-8. She serves on the ERWC Steering Committee.

To learn more about ERWC or how to access this free curriculum, please visit https://writing.csusuccess.org/.

Editor’s Note: The 2025 ERWC Literacy Conference will be June 23rd in Long Beach, California. Our theme this year is “Leaning into Liminality: A Return to Language, Wonder, and Inspiration.” Registration is free! Please visit the ERWC Online Community for more information.

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admin Assessment

Can’t Read, Won’t Read

The latest NAEP reading scores suggest all the above.

By Carol Jago

Many of us had hoped that the 2024 NAEP reading assessment results would offer evidence that students had recovered from the pandemic slump and were back on track. The opposite, alas, is the case. Eighth grade students in every state scored worse in reading comprehension than they had in 2022, worse than they have in 30 years. Most alarmingly, the steepest score declines were from our lowest performing students. The gap between academic haves and have-nots has become a chasm.

The Nation’s Report Card provides data on how well students are performing in various academic subject areas.

You can view many charts and graphs of state-by-state and subgroup results. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

The 8th graders who were tested in 2024 are currently in our 9th grade classrooms, most likely struggling not only with reading in English but across the curriculum, including in math. Blaming the screen age is too easy. For one, we are as guilty as our students of succumbing to the temptation to substitute scrolling for deep reading. For another, these screens – and glasses and who knows what else – will become only more ubiquitous in the days to come.

Source: National Assessment Governing Board

To suggest the need for a corrective is an understatement. We need a revolutionary return to rigor. Fortunately, California State University’s ERWC modules are models of rigorous, engaging curriculum and the ERWC community is a safe place to share one’s travails. But we also need to enlist students in this work. ERWC isn’t something we do to teenagers but rather a vehicle for strengthening their reading and writing muscles while engaging in challenging intellectual work. The goal isn’t a completed packet; it’s making rhetorical thinking a habit of mind.

To accomplish this, we need students to come to class. Every day. NAEP survey results revealed that 26% of students are chronically absent, that is, they are missing 4-5 days of school per month. When students miss this much school, they are always a bit off-balance. They can feel they are missing key pieces of the lesson. It’s a Swiss cheese experience of school.

Source: National Assessment Governing Board

The other survey data that depresses me is the news that students who score in the lowest percentiles report that they “never or hardly ever” read for fun. Of course, it makes sense that students who read poorly wouldn’t enjoy reading. I’m a very poor swimmer and would never choose to plunge into a pool for pleasure. That said, volume matters when it comes to reading proficiency. We get good at what we do. The solution cannot be to make the books we offer students easier or funnier but rather to teach them what to do when the going gets tough. We also need to create a classroom atmosphere where independent reading is the norm and talking about that reading happens all the time.

Reading for pleasure increases a reader’s background knowledge, not because the reader is taking notes but rather through osmosis. Students who read more, know more and, as a result of knowing more, find reading easier, more pleasurable. It’s a virtuous cycle. For a deeper dive into this aspect of reading comprehension, I recommend Kelly Gallagher’s latest book from Heinemann, To Read Stuff, You Need to Know Stuff: Helping Students Build and Use Prior Knowledge (Heinemann 2024).

On April 24 I will be offering an ERWC webinar titled “With Rigor for All: What NAEP Reading Scores Do and Don’t Tell Us.” Please join me for a closer look at the Nation’s Report Card. I will also be both demonstrating instructional moves that can help us move the needle and talking about new books for teenage readers.

Let’s help one another rise to this challenge. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.

Carol Jago is a member of the ERWC Steering Committee and a long-time high school English teacher. She edits California English, the quarterly journal of the California Association of Teachers of English.

Editor’s Note: The 2025 ERWC Literacy Conference will be June 23rd in Long Beach, California. Our theme this year is “Leaning into Liminality: A Return to Language, Wonder, and Inspiration.” Registration is free! Please visit the ERWC Online Community for more information, including the Call for Presenters.

2025 Call for PresentersDownload
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admin Modules and Minis

What Teachers Want to Know about the New ERWC Grant

By Anne Portferfield

As you may have heard, there’s a new ERWC grant opportunity! Through the Education Innovation and Research grant, California State University is developing yearlong ERWC courses for grades 9 and 10, and high school English teachers will pilot them beginning in the 2025–26 school year.

I have begun meeting with teachers to discuss the grant opportunity, and some teachers are overjoyed that the new curriculum is on the way! One teacher noted that implementing the ERWC will ensure that grade 9 and 10 English courses are rigorous–which is essential in this post-pandemic era. Several teachers noted that the ERWC will prepare students for the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Course.

Teachers also have questions. I’ll start with an easy one. Almost every teacher I’ve spoken with has the same question: What will the curriculum include?

Each grade will have two thematic pathways for teachers in the grant to choose from. The grade 9 pathways will be identity and civic engagement, and the grade 10 pathways will be community and communication. The pathways will include all of the same types of modules as are available at the upper grades (i.e., portfolio, mini, issue, book, and drama). All modules will have integrated and designated ELD embedded. After the grant, grade 9 and 10 ERWC teachers will have the same flexibility to create their own DIY course design as grade 11 and 12 ERWC teachers.

Sample pathways for Grade 9 (actual course design may vary)

Yes, there will be a Romeo and Juliet module. No, you don’t have to teach it if you don’t want to! Some of the other texts being considered for the new curriculum include Born a Crime, Klara and the Sun, We Are Not Free, The Hate U Give, Funny in Farsi, Braiding Sweetgrass, Home is Not a Country, and Night. What the curriculum developers can guarantee is that texts will be highly engaging for students, which is a cornerstone of the ERWC.

Jennifer Fletcher, the Chair of the ERWC Steering Committee, shared, “The curriculum will be really good. We are going to be proud of it when we put it in front of teachers.” 

Teachers also want to know what the professional learning entails. ERWC teachers will engage in 20-25 hours of professional learning every year they participate in the grant. Below are descriptions of the professional learning components of the grant:

  • Summer workshops: ERWC teachers will attend a two-day summer workshop every summer they are participating in the grant. As a former teacher, I know that summers are coveted! If your school signs up for the grant, the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools will work with you to schedule the summer institute at a time that works well. The goal is for the workshops to be in-person, but there may be some virtual options.
  • Coaching: ERWC teachers will be assigned a coach to be a thought partner. The coaches will be professors, literacy specialists, experienced ERWC trainers, etc. Teachers will engage in five coaching sessions, which will include a pre-conversation, a classroom observation, and a reflection conversation. The coaching sessions will not be evaluative, and no information will be reported back to your district.
  • Community of practice meetings: ERWC teachers will attend five 1-hour community of practice meetings. These can take place at the school site during already-scheduled meeting time.

Teachers also have questions about stipends. As a former teacher, I remember spending countless hours doing work that I was not compensated for. We want teachers who are part of this grant to feel valued! Here’s more information about the stipends:

  • Each ERWC teacher will receive $4,000 total–$2,000 for the pilot year and $2,000 for the evaluation year. If a teacher teaches the ERWC in both grades 9 and 10, they will receive $8,000 total ($4,000 per grade).
  • Each traditional English teacher will receive $1,000 total during the evaluation year.
  • Each school will identify a site lead, who will be responsible for communicating information about the grant. They will receive $3,000 total–$1,000 for each year of the study.
  • The $20,000 school stipend is intended to be used to support ERWC teachers. In the past ERWC grants, schools have used this stipend to purchase copies of books for every student, pay teachers their hourly/daily rates for attending professional learning, provide subs for professional learning days, etc.
  • Districts usually keep the $5,000 stipend to offset the cost of providing WestEd with student-level data.

The ERWC and traditional teacher stipends will be paid directly to teachers by WestEd. The site lead stipend will be paid directly to site leads by the California State University. The school stipend will be paid to the district, and the district will make the money available to the schools.

In addition to these stipends, schools and teachers also receive all the materials they need to implement the new curriculum, including class sets of books for book modules.

There have also been some questions about scheduling throughout the grant. Schools need the following teachers in place each year of the grant:

 2025–262026–272027–28
Grade 9Pilot Year At least two teachers pilot the ERWC   At least one teacher continues to use the regular curriculumEvaluation Year The same two teachers as the previous year teach the ERWC   At least one teacher continues to use the regular curriculum 
Grade 10 Pilot Year At least two teachers pilot the ERWC   At least one teacher continues to use the regular curriculumEvaluation Year The same two teachers as the previous year teach the ERWC   At least one teacher continues to use the regular curriculum

And lastly, teachers want to know how they can sign their schools up for the grant. The first step is to meet with me! Please feel free to email me to set up a meeting (anne.porterfield@wested.org). We would discuss the details of the grant, and I would address any lingering questions. If it seems like the grant may work at your school, we would then share information about the grant with other teachers at your school, school administrators, and district administrators. If all parties agree to participate, then WestEd would set up a memorandum of understanding with your district.

You may also learn more about the grant in an upcoming webinar on Monday, October 21st at 4pm PT. You may register for the information session here.

Anne Porterfield is a Senior Program Associate with Research-Practice Partnerships. She serves as both a project manager and qualitative researcher for projects and evaluations.

admin Modules and Minis, Reflection and Metacognition

The ERWC Portfolio

By Lori Campbell

Spring is the bittersweet season when our ERWC students prepare their portfolios for the transition to college. I have the privilege of keeping many of my students for two or more years in the Kern Learn blended program, so I have been able to track their growth through the two pathways in grades 11 and 12. I can see their accomplishments, but they don’t necessarily see what I see. The ERWC portfolio is an important benchmark for students rather than their teachers.

In Kern County, through the Building Bridges Conference, English and composition teachers from the Kern High School District, the various community colleges in our area, and Cal State Bakersfield come together to reflect on various issues in literacy for the students we serve. In one of the sessions, I attended an excellent presentation that explained the freshman composition requirements for these institutions and gave me insight into just how important that portfolio is. Here’s how I explained it to my seniors.

Students benefit most by having a basic understanding of rhetorical reading and writing when they enter college. The General Education composition requirement instructs students in effective research and report writing. However, having a toolkit of rhetorical strategies for tackling difficult academic texts aids tremendously in their courses to succeed in research.

This is what ERWC provides at the high school level. The portfolio shows students how these tools have helped them navigate and understand these texts over the past year (or two!). They have examples of rhetorical strategies and a record of how they work. At CSU Bakersfield, first-year college students who still feel they have not mastered these skills can take the “Stretch” course (English 1100), which lasts a full year and provides a booster of rhetorical strategies in their first semester. If they believe they have met their learning goals in ERWC, they can move with confidence directly into the single-semester course for research skills.

Grade 12 ERWC Portfolio Module Overview

ERWC is not just for students who are CSU-bound. Students engage in rhetorical reading and writing no matter the higher education venue they choose. Our community colleges provide practice in these skills in the first semester of their college composition classes (whether they have taken ERWC or not). Entering students can pay to take a challenge assessment to test out of that course, but they are still required to demonstrate the ability to engage in inquiry, read purposefully, and write rhetorically. Looking through the work they have completed throughout the modules, students can evaluate their preparedness for college reading and writing, regardless of their destination.

Working with seniors in spring is like herding kittens in a dust storm. They have become skittish, forgetful, and just a little terrified. The ERWC portfolio shows them concrete evidence of their college readiness like no other indicator. Scores on tests tell them how well they can take tests. The ERWC portfolio shows students what they are capable of doing. This important collection of documents serves as a resource students can consult as they navigate the next step in their academic journey.

The takeaway learning contained in the ERWC portfolio is too important to leave behind.

Lori Campbell is the English department chair for Kern High School District’s Kern Learn Program. This is a complete distance learning program that provides students the option to take their A-G required courses online. She has taught ERWC both face-to-face and through distance learning for over 10 years. Lori holds her master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction.

admin Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Pedagogies, Digital Texts, Social Justice

Upcoming ERWC Webinar with Antero Garcia!


Editor’s Note: ERWC is delighted to announce a free webinar with Antero Garcia on Thursday, January 18th at 4:30 pm PST. Antero is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and Vice President of the National Council of Teachers of English. A former English teacher at a public high school in South Central Los Angeles, Antero’s research explores the possibilities of speculative imagination and healing in educational research. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books about the possibilities of literacies, play, and civics in transforming schooling in America. His new book, co-authored with Ernest Morrell, is Tuned-In Teaching: Centering Youth Culture for an Active and Just Classroom.

Register for Antero’s webinar here.

By Chris Lewis, Ph.D.

In 2015, I was deep in my dissertation research, floundering in theory about utopian philosophy and feverishly re-reading M.T. Anderson’s brilliant young adult novel Feed.

As part of my study, I was working with a group of high school seniors reading dystopian novels and talking about youth civic engagement and participation in resistance movements. There had been an increase in dystopian fiction being published for young readers, and I wondered what they were thinking when young characters overthrew the oppressive systems in their respective societies.

I was fortunate to come across Antero Garcia’s (2013) Critical Foundations in Young Adult Literature: Challenging Genres, where he discussed an essential element in all of young adult dystopian (also a feature of many fairy tales) where the adults/parents are incapable of maintaining the society they built. Antero argued,

“It is a powerful transfer of responsibility found in these books: adults cannot rectify the past nor can they correct the future. It is up to the students in our classrooms-the students reading these books-to transform society for the better. YA, then, if we are to look for a unifying message across the books, is about teaching youth to grow up and own the future.”

(Garcia 133)

The youth participants in my study agreed with Antero’s assessment throughout their own reflections, noting how the effect of youth-led movements would lead to a more inclusive future and how contemporary classrooms may not be preparing them for this important work. 

In the years since my defense, where Antero was a member of my dissertation committee, his scholarship has focused on the importance of youth voice, civic engagement, and humanizing education. His writing continues to inspire me and helps me think through the complexities educators face when youth express their disillusionment in turbulent political times. I am constantly reminded how, without constant reflection on pedagogy and practice, educators might inadvertently disempower youth through our curricular choices or the systems we put in place. 

We need more classrooms to be spaces of incubation where our students’ ideas, however outlandish they may seem through an adult lens, have space to grow and flourish. And while there will be times where youth feel helpless and fearful, there is power in radical hope. Antero’s research provides essential practices where teachers and students can engage in this kind of learning that just might change the world for the better.

Interested in some more reading on these topics, check out:

Cammarota, J., & Fine, M. (2008). Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion. New York, NY: Routledge.

Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers.

Hogg, L., Stockbridge, K., Achieng-Evensen, C, & SooHoo, S. (2021). Pedagogies of with-ness: Students, teachers, voice and agency. Myers Education Press.

Mirra, N., & Garcia, A. (2023). Civics for the world to come: Committing to democracy in every classroom. W. W. Norton.

Mirra, N., Garcia, A., & Morrell, E. (2016). Doing youth participatory action research; Transforming inquiry with researchers, educators, and students. Routledge.

Chris Lewis is a TOSA supporting ELs and a part-time lecturer for a graduate education program. He also serves as the ERWC Social Media Coordinator. His publications include two chapters in Pedagogies of With-ness : Students, Teachers, Voice and Agency: “Who is Listening to Student?” and “Finding Hope Through Dystopian Fiction.” You can follow Chris @chrislewis_10.

Save the Date!

The 2024 ERWC Literacy Conferences will be held June 17 in Northern California and June 25 in Southern California. Please make your calendar. All are welcome!

ERWC 2023-24 Literacy Webinar Series:

In the Classroom

All webinars are scheduled for 4:30 pm on a Thursday. Registration is free. Connect with your ERWC colleagues, enjoy top-quality professional learning, and hear ERWC updates.

Antero Garcia: January 18, 2024 at 4:30 pm PST

“Building Student Engagement”

Does your classroom ever feel stuck, or out-of-tune? Meaningful teaching is something educators strive for each day. Educators also know that there is no such thing as a perfect classroom. Despite our best intentions, our classrooms sometimes feel like they’re stuck, or out of tune. In this webinar, Antero Garcia will explain why we should allow students to play an integral role in turning classrooms into spaces for greater engagement and innovation.

Troy Hicks: February 15, 2024 at 4:30 pm PST
“Teaching with Technology”

Interested in using technology more effectively in the classroom? In this webinar, Troy Hicks–an ISTE Certified Educator–will introduce “digital diligence”–an alert, intentional stance that helps both teachers and students use technology productively, ethically, and responsibly. Hear his strategies for minimizing digital distraction, fostering civil conversations, evaluating information on the internet, creating meaningful digital writing, and deeply engaging with multimedia texts.

Looking for an ERWC Workshop?

Find upcoming in-person or virtual ERWC professional learning sessions. ERWC workshops are free to teachers in California!

Please contact Dr. Lisa Benham at lbenhan@fcoe.org for information on ERWC professional learning services outside of California.

admin Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Pedagogies, Social Justice

The Bias that Divides Us

Review of Get Free: Antibias Literacy Instruction for Stronger Readers, Writers, and Thinkers by Tricia Ebarvia

By Carol Jago

Are you looking for a book to spark fresh conversation in your English Department or PLC? Tricia Ebarvia invites readers to reexamine many practices that we take for granted as beneficial. For example, asking us, many of whom give up every lunch hour and stay long after school to help students, “Whom are we not helping?” That question hit me hard.

Every assertion Ebarvia makes is supported by research. She cites Daniel Kahneman’s work in Thinking, Fast and Slow in which the eminent psychologist describes experiments where he demonstrated how people were disproportionally and unknowingly influenced by a single piece of information, often the first piece of information presented given to them to solve a problem. I could not help but think about assumptions I had made about students that deserved much greater attention. I know you are thinking about how you have 36 kids in your fifth-period class and a student load of 180, but that doesn’t change what individual students deserve. Ebarvia asks, “How many troublemakers are simply students who are least like us?”

Along with posing questions that challenge the status quo, the book offers an extraordinary list of essays to use as mentor texts for student writing. The extensive list is organized by topics such as: Our Bodies, Ourselves (“The Clan of the One-Breasted Women” by Terry Tempest Williams), Falling in Love (“What We Hunger For” by Roxane Gay), and What Keeps You Up at Night (“Difficult Girl” by Lena Dunham). Ebarvia’s suggestions are excellent and abundant. This is a treasure trove for anyone looking to refresh curriculum.

Art by Gian Wong

A fascinating feature of the book is the author’s note on the artwork that appears throughout the text. The artist Gian Wong designed patterns and images inspired by traditional ethnic textiles and Filipino culture. On many pages Maya birds, indigenous to the Philippines, break free in flight.

Get Free is also a practical guide for supporting students as they encounter rich, challenging texts, discovering along the way what they have to say about the provocative ideas of others. A chapter on classroom discussion, “Setting the Table for Radical Openness in Our Conversation,” offers suggestions for navigating choppy waters. I predict that this book will disrupt how you think about your work with students. It did for me.

“The Philippine Sun” by Gian Wong. Description from Get Free: The Philippine sun (“araw”) symbolizes the spark and light in each individual that makes them unique.

Carol Jago is a long-time high school English teacher and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is associate director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA and serves on the International Literacy Association board of directors. She is the author of The Book in Question: Why and How Reading Is in Crisis and can be reached at cjago@caroljago.com.

Editor’s Note: If you’ll be traveling to Columbus, OH for the 2023 NCTE Convention, you can see Carol Jago in person at her session on Friday, November 17th at 2:00 p.m.

Please see the recording of Tricia Ebarvia’s webinar for the ERWC Community from 2021 for more information on antibias literacy instruction. You can find the recording in the ERWC Webinar Series.

The next ERWC webinar will be Thursday, November 16th at 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time with Marc Watkins, a leading researcher in classroom applications for generative AI. Marc is an academic innovation fellow at the University of Mississippi. In this special webinar, Marc will explore best practices in teaching students AI literacy, AI assistance, and AI aptitude. Registration is free.

admin Modules and Minis, Professional Learning

A Visit to the Vaults: Opening the ERWC Archive

EDITOR’S NOTE: Registration for the 2023 ERWC Literacy Conference closes on Monday, May 22. Reserve your spot now before this event sells out!

By Jennifer Fletcher

Like In-N-Out Burger’s “secret” menu, the ERWC Module Archive offers special options for those in-the-know. Roughly 100 modules have been published over the 20 years of ERWC’s history as a nationally recognized literacy initiative, including dozens of modules in versions 1.0 and 2.0.

There are some terrific first and second edition ERWC modules still available for use. While these modules no longer include the module texts (copyright costs prevent Cal State from renewing permissions for all three editions of the curriculum), most of the reading selections can still easily be found online through their original publishers. For instance, “The Last Meow,” a module about the rising costs of veterinary care, uses a feature article in The New Yorker while “The Undercover Parent,” a module about spyware, uses an op-ed piece from The New York Times.

For those of us who have been working with ERWC since its inception in 2003, a visit to the ERWC module archive is a stroll down memory lane. We remember how deeply engaged our students were in analyzing images from an Abercrombie and Fitch marketing campaign, the powerful conversations students had over bell hook’s examination of love and justice, and the moving depiction of Roger Ebert’s transcendent joy following his life-changing battle with cancer. And what veteran ERWC teacher can forget “Bring a Text You Like to Class”?—a perennially popular module on bridging students’ in-school and out-of-school literacies that requires no copyright permissions (aside from those protecting the CSU’s own intellectual property rights).

Esquire, March 2010

English departments looking to build a full 9-12 ERWC vertical articulation may find the “secret menu” modules especially appealing, as these can fill gaps in grade 9 and 10 ELA courses. Teachers in other content areas such as social science or in academic preparation programs such as AVID who would like to try out ERWC’s inquiry-based, rhetorical approach to literacy learning may likewise find the older modules useful. Going to the archive could mean not having to compete with the English department for module selections.

While the first and second editions of the curriculum were designed using an older version of the ERWC Assignment Template, ERWC’s focus on developing transferable critical thinking and literacy skills ensures all iterations of the template are enduringly relevant. Each version of the template names the transferable competencies that promote postsecondary success in reading and writing. The recursive literacy process described by the template and enacted through the “ERWC Arc” is imagined in somewhat different ways in each edition of the curriculum, but the goal of the course design remains the same: To support students in developing and internalizing their OWN flexible process for understanding, analyzing, evaluating, and composing texts.

A caveat: Schools that have adopted ERWC grade 11 or 12 under UCOP program status are required to use the 3.0 course descriptions and modules for their approved ERWC courses. ERWC has full courses for grades 11 and 12 and resources for grades 7-10. The resources (i.e., modules and activities) can be used in existing courses such as English 9 without the UCOP restrictions, provided the teachers accessing the materials have been ERWC certified. All teachers must complete 20 hours of ERWC professional learning to gain access to the curriculum.

Jennifer Fletcher is a Professor of English at California State University, Monterey Bay and a former high school teacher. She serves as the Chair of the ERWC Steering Committee. You can follow her on Twitter @JenJFletcher.

2023 ERWC LITERACY CONFERENCE

June 20 in Sacramento & June 26 in Pomona

Conference registration closes May 22! The $75 registration fee includes continental breakfast and a buffet lunch. Administrators, literacy coaches, counselors, and CSU faculty get 50% off registration using the code ERWC50PERCENT. CSU students can register for free using the code ERWCSUFREE.

All are welcome! You don’t have to be an ERWC teacher to attend.

Featured Speakers
  • Carol Jago, author of The Book in Question
  • Matthew Johnson, author of Flash Feedback
  • Jen Roberts, author of Power Up
  • Lamar L. Johnson, author of Critical Race English Education
  • John Edlund, Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric and Founding Chair of the ERWC Task Force
admin Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Pedagogies, English Language Development, High Impact Strategies Toolkit, Modules and Minis

Into, Through, and Beyond the High Impact Strategies Toolkit

By Robby Ching

Over the decades of my career, I’ve observed creative teachers devise multiple engaging and effective ways to support students in learning English, especially the English valued in academic settings. When the first ERWC middle school modules were written, I thought how valuable it would be to gather the strategies that appeared throughout those modules along with others that have become hallmarks of the ERWC approach so teachers could transfer them to whatever texts they were teaching. 

During the development of ERWC 3.0,  along with my ERWC-ELD colleagues, Adele Arellano, Pam Spycher, and Debra Boggs, I was given the opportunity to do just that. We identified strategies in the newly developed ERWC-ELD modules, focusing on the activities we recognized were especially high impact for English learners students but would be valuable for most students still developing disciplinary English. In consultation with the ERWC-ELD team, I organized these strategies using the same structure that provides the DNA of all ERWC modules, the Assignment Template. We also identified activities that could be used at any point across a module, for example, activities focused on goal setting or discussion strategies.

The result was the High Impact Strategies Toolkit to Support English Learners.

Later, we revised the Toolkit by adding even more activities and identifying the ELD Standards that students would meet when teachers employed the protocols. For ease of access, Debra Boggs created a searchable Table of Contents. We created a Word version so you can modify and adapt the student version of an activity for your own texts and teaching situation. Our final document (final for now, since new strategies could certainly be identified and added) is a 129-page treasure trove of inspiration for good teaching.

All ERWC modules can be adapted to include additional Integrated and Designated ELD, the vision of the California Framework for ELA and ELD. Beyond that, using the High Impact Strategies Toolkit means that whatever other texts or text sets you are teaching, you can move through the stages of the ERWC Template and draw on strategies that will ensure a student-centered and inquiry-based approach and the ongoing development of students’ disciplinary language. 

For example, Save the Last Word encourages students to engage with a text and discuss it in small groups. Charting Claims Across Multiple Texts transfers responsibility to students to track what they are reading so they have what they need at their fingertips when they are ready to do text-based writing. Sentence Unpacking guides students in understanding the writer’s craft at the word, phrase, and clause level so they can apply what they learn when they go to craft sentences of their own. Purpose Analysis prompts students to read their own writing rhetorically and revise accordingly. Students develop active listening and encounter key concepts as they work together to do Collaborative Text Reconstruction.

Charting Claims Across Multiple Texts

I’ve even observed schools adopt a strategy such as Annotation, Summary, Response to use across the disciplines in history and science classes, not just in English classes, a powerful way to truly make students college and career ready.

Early in my ERWC collaboration with high school teachers, an outstanding teacher told me the ERWC template kept him honest. Since then, the federal studies that supported the development of ERWC 2.0 and 3.0 have confirmed that students whose teachers are faithful to the Template—not teaching every activity in a module but guiding students as they move through each phase of Reading Rhetorically, Discovering What They Think, and Writing Rhetorically—are likely to be more successful than students whose teachers short-circuit it. 

Self-accountability is key—asking myself, am I making sure that my students experience a robust set of activities at each stage of the reading and writing process so that at the end of a module or assignment sequence, they can successfully contribute their authentic voices to an ongoing conversation of consequence? And to answer yes to that question, I can turn to the High Impact Strategies Toolkit in planning a module or a year-long pathway to support students as they practice the strategies of proficient readers and writers. And in the spirit of expansive framing, I can make sure my students reflect on how these strategies can be transferred to new situations in other modules, other classes, and in the world beyond school.

Robby Ching is a professor emerita at Sacramento State in English and a member of the ERWC team since 2002. She has written many ERWC modules, most recently those with an ELD focus.

2023 ERWC Literacy Conference

June 20 in Sacramento & June 26 in Pomona

Conference registration is now open! The $75 registration fee includes continental breakfast and a buffet lunch. Discounts available for administrators, literacy coaches, and counselors.

aspects-of-learning-that-can-be-framed-engel-et-alDownload
admin Building Community, Social and Emotional Learning, Writing Rhetorically

Adopting a Mentoring Stance

By Christy Kenny-Kitchin

I recently presented at the CATE Convention in Monterey, California on taking a mentoring stance when responding to student writing. I worked with two professors from Cal State–Chris Street and Norm Unrau. We all shared on the importance of responding appropriately to student writing. We focused on how much our responses to our students affect our connection with them and, in turn, their ability, or perhaps desire to show up for us in class.

After Chris shared a less-than-kind comment he had received from a teacher when he was a student, we elicited responses from the audience about their experiences. Nearly every person had an experience in which one of their teachers had said something to them, perhaps a brief statement or a seemingly innocuous small, two-word response on a project that had changed the student’s perspective on their own learning.

I shared from the perspective of a secondary teacher that post pandemic, I had struggled greatly to connect with my students as I had done in the past and how classroom management was now a huge issue.

As if to prepare me for the presentation, the week prior to the conference, I decided to significantly change my approach to the teaching of writing. I had spoken to several colleagues at different schools and knew that the lack of skills–both academic and inter-personal–was what we might term “the new pandemic.” I could see that critical thinking and writing skills were seriously lacking and, when I considered that the last time my seniors had had an uninterrupted year of schooling face-to-face with a writing teacher, they were freshmen. Their skills reflected this.

My classes were in the middle of writing the speech for the “Language, Gender, and Culture” ERWC module. I decided to extend the amount of in-class time we spent on the assignment in order to provide daily instruction on every aspect of the writing process. I gave a mini-lesson each day and walked around the room to see each student’s progress. One after another said they did not need help or that they needed “time to think” through their writer’s block. I gave them space to write and continued to share lessons as a whole class, thinking they would absorb the information. By the second day, I had seen very little progress with any student in any class. So, I offered student-teacher writing conferences. Only a couple of people in each class approached. I then made it mandatory that they have a conference before moving on to their rough drafts.

As we sat in each conference, one on one, in front of the entire class, but talking softly, I was able to see what was lacking in their approach, and in their thinking about the topic. They saw me brainstorm with them, showing them the structure for their topic. They watched as I struggled with them to come up with the specifics of their topic then their issue, their question at issue, and finally their thesis statement for the speech. We worked on funneling down their ideas to something specific enough to be able to write a 2 to 3 page speech instead of what many of them had–a topic so broad that only a textbook could do it justice.

As each student sat before me, watching my thinking and hearing me say things such as, “This is definitely a topic that we can work with. Let’s narrow it down so it’s easy to approach,” and “I like where you’re going with this. You have some really good ideas!” I saw them light up. I continued in some conferences to say things like, “I am struggling to figure out where to take this topic. Give me a second. Let’s take a moment to brainstorm this one together.”

Not only did these conferences allow me to show each student a solid approach to their assignment, I could clearly see how each of them processed their thinking, which students had anxiety with either approaching a teacher or a big writing task, and who needed more support moving forward. But by responding kindly with my comments and showing them my thinking, we connected on a human level.

As I reflected on the conferences each day, I recalled how, prior to the pandemic, I had given each class an intro writing assignment in August in which they explained to me either a positive or a negative experience they had had in the past with an English class or teacher. With that assignment, I would call each of them up to have a brief conference to discuss their experience and answer any questions they had. I hadn’t had a classroom management issue in years. What I didn’t realize is that it was because they had seen me early in the year as a human who cared.

During this school year, the first full year of in-person learning, I had struggled with classroom management reminding me of my first few years as a teacher. I was ready to quit the profession.

However, in bringing back these student-teacher conferences, I noticed a significant shift in every one of my classes. Students were suddenly following every request and they are now more willing to show up–physically, mentally and emotionally. Some students are sharing their personal struggles with me rather than sitting in class, as Audre Lorde states, silently swallowing their tyrannies day by day until they “sicken and die of them still in silence.”

This connection is not only what had been lacking for my students, but it is the exact thing I needed as an educator to keep me enlivened in this profession.

Christy Kenny-Kitchin is an English teacher at Buena Park High School where she has also served as a Literacy Coach and Curriculum Specialist. She has taught English at the middle school, high school, and college levels. Having written one of the i3 modules (“The Daily Challenge”), she also worked as an academic coach to teachers for the i3 grant. Christy has been leading ERWC professional learning workshops for over a decade.

Editor’s Note: Please see the new ERWC teaching resource, “Adopting a Mentoring Stance with Student Writers,” for more strategies for cultivating students’ writing lives and identities.

2023 ERWC Literacy Conference

Please consider submitting a proposal to present at this year’s ERWC Literacy Conference, to be held June 20th in Sacramento and June 26th in Pomona. Cal State University pays travel costs for selected presenters. See the Call for Presenters here. 

The deadline for proposals has been extended to April 14, 2023.

Conference registration is now open! The $75 registration fee includes continental breakfast and a buffet lunch. Discounts available for administrators, literacy coaches, and counselors.

admin Course Design, Middle School Modules, Modules and Minis

The Story Behind ERWC 3.0

By Jennifer Fletcher

This past weekend I had the joy and privilege of sharing a sneak preview of the forthcoming ERWC modules for grades 6-8 at the CATE Convention in Monterey, a few miles south of my home in Seaside, CA. I shared poems by Daniel B. Summerhill, Elizabeth Acevedo, Clint Smith, and Joshua Bennett and talked about how the module I’m writing, “Songs of Praise,” includes both integrated and designated English language development. I also offered a quick peek at some of the activities under construction:

Talking about my current work as a middle school module writer reminded me of the monumental effort it took to get the third edition of the high school curriculum out into the world. The development of ERWC 3.0 was unlike any other writing project I’ve been involved with. It was messy, overwhelming, and exhilarating. The project took on a creative life force of its own beyond anything we had anticipated that resulted in a product that exceeded our expectations (and, frankly, our copyright budget). What we now see as ERWC’s “equity upgrade” stretched my thinking and tested my commitment to flexibility in all kinds of ways. If you’ve ever wondered how the third edition came to be, here’s the story behind ERWC 3.0.

Expanding the Inquiry Space

With the third edition of the ERWC, we didn’t just expand the inquiry space; we blew it wide open. We made extensive room and time to leverage the talents and insights of people in our community and to recruit people who could bring additional expertise from throughout California and the State of Washington, our partner in the multimillion dollar federal grant that funded the new curriculum. We sought to bridge gaps in our own knowledge and to adapt and apply what we learned from the first two editions to the redesigned course.

And that meant our content creation team had to grow exponentially. We ballooned from an original task force of around ten members back in 2003 for the first edition of ERWC to a community of module writers that included scores of educators from two states for the third edition. We also sought to bring the ERWC to scale by expanding the curriculum to the 11th grade and the ERWC literacy network to the states of Washington, Hawaii, West Virginia, and New Mexico.

This time, the pool of module authors included high school teachers and college faculty with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and identities. Authors approached the task from various angles and perspectives, and we worked to learn from each other. Each module author thus opened a window into a particular facet of our literacy network. We were able to get a closer look at each others’ teaching lives and social worlds while working to achieve a shared vision of the future we want for our students.

We didn’t just tell potential contributors the budget and specs and send them off to complete their work alone. Instead, we kept our eyes on both the product and the process, knowing that in some ways the latter would have an even greater impact on the kind of relationships and community we built through this work. And we were open to change when the ERWC Assignment Template or a module took a direction we hadn’t tried before.

We also took extra care to expand the inquiry space during the early stages of project development. We took time to review our theoretical foundations, rethink our course and module design, and learn about current best practices in our profession, including Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and culturally sustaining pedagogies. We held workshops on the English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools. We met in writers’ groups. We developed and reviewed module proposals, developed and reviewed module drafts. Then we piloted the drafts and followed up with more review and revision.

The ERWC’s evolving Theoretical Foundations, moreover, informed everything we did, even down to our smallest edits. For instance, as we revised the draft modules we worked to omit prescriptive or didactic language—words such as “should” or “must”—that was contrary to our rhetorical, assets-based approach.

While the process was at times more generative and serendipitous than we were perhaps prepared for (over 80 new modules were ultimately developed), we believe we have a stronger curriculum and community as a result.

Innovation in Instructional Design


The outcome of this process is a curriculum that offers teachers and students more choices, more literature, a greater diversity of authors and text types, more means of expression (using UDL), more support for English Language Learners, and more opportunities for analyzing visual rhetoric and new media. The third edition also includes mini-modules on key rhetorical concepts such as the rhetorical situation, genre, and kairos. We’re excited to further expand the curriculum and its pedagogies through the forthcoming collection of new language-focused modules for grades 6-8.

What is perhaps most promising about our practice as we approach the 20th anniversary of ERWC is what we’ve learned about the benefits of inquiry and collaboration. The features of ERWC 3.0 that move the course toward greater student agency and educational equity are those that developed out of some of our richest discussions and newest learning: UDL, teaching for transfer, learning goals and reflection, culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies, and the California English Language Development Standards. We had to be willing to approach this work with the same open mind and tolerance of confusion that we encourage students to bring to their work with texts. We had to learn to accept the mess and trust that it, too, is generative. We had to embrace the process of discovery.

Moving Forward


With the new middle school curriculum, we’re now hitting that pivot point after we’ve expanded the inquiry space and invited mess and complexity where we need to start making some decisions about the final form of the modules. Our task is to make sure we retain those protean structures–rhetoric and inquiry, the arc and the spiral–that allow us to have a shared vision and purpose. This is the piece that needs to be locked into place before we can publish any new iteration of ERWC.

But the other components of the ERWC—the network of over 15,000 teachers, the professional development programs, communities of practice, multi-state collaborations, online discussions and resources, webinars, and blog—will remain fluid and responsive. These are the places where teachers can continue to think through the extent to which ERWC 3.0 is helping students become better readers, writers, and thinkers and how instruction can be further improved. The lesson learned is the need for flexible components in literacy initiatives that remain plugged into the feedback loop, to the lived realities of individual students and teachers and the changing dynamics of particular classrooms.

We can’t wait to see what happens in the next chapters of ERWC’s story. 🙂

Jennifer Fletcher is a Professor of English at California State University, Monterey Bay and a former high school teacher. She serves as the Chair of the ERWC Steering Committee. You can follow her on Twitter @JenJFletcher.

NOTE: Please consider submitting a proposal to present at this year’s ERWC Literacy Conference, to be held June 20th in Sacramento and June 26th in Pomona. Cal State University pays travel costs for selected presenters. See the Call for Presenters here.

Conference registration is now open!