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 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!

Jonathon Medeiros Inquiry, Modules and Minis

Question with No Answers

By Jonathon Medeiros

When does the river become the delta? When does the delta become the sea? Do fish see the water they breathe? Is that right, do fish breathe? When did the cavaquinho become the ukulele? Is dancing storytelling? Why is live music pleasurable?

I believe in questions, not answers. I believe in the power of curiosity. There is value in the work of being curious, in looking at or even imagining connections. I believe that we can build empathy by practicing curiosity, by examining the visible and invisible connections around us. Often, however, my students seem to think that empathy and curiosity and kindness are fixed personality traits; either we are or are not those things, in the way we are or are not 5ʻ9”. 

We can build the muscles of curiosity and questioning through practice, in the same way we can build our ability to run or climb or write. After all, we learn by asking and exploring the crevices of questions, especially those to which no answer is obvious. Finding correct answers is often not actually important to learning. Once an answer is deemed to be “correct,” we stop looking and consequently stop learning. The act of being curious, of following that curiosity, of following up answers with more questions, is key and this is what leads us to explore and expand our ideas.

While this may be true, convincing students of the importance of asking questions with no answers, and trying to make that kind of questioning second nature for students, can be difficult. Humans sometimes want to find an answer so they can stop working, but this mindset keeps us closed off from othersʻ ideas.

The ERWC mini-module “Introducing Inquiry Questions” is a wonderful way to introduce students to the simple but powerful idea that being curious is important. This mini unit makes explicit the benefits of asking questions without answers through a variety of activities and texts, including an engaging TED talk. Students investigate times that they have asked curious questions, reminding them that this was once natural for most of us, and then walks them through some texts that help clarify the power of picking that habit up again. Emma Chiappettaʻs new book Creating Curious Classrooms: The Beauty of Questions is another amazing resource focused on teaching us how to cultivate curiosity in our classrooms and with our students.

Jonathon Medeiros has been teaching and learning about Language Arts and rhetoric for seventeen years with students on Kauaʻi. He frequently writes poetry, memoir, and essays about education. He is the former director of the Kauaʻi Teacher Fellowship. Jonathon enjoys building things, surfing, and spending time with his wife and daughters. He believes in teaching his students that if you change all of your mistakes and regrets, you’d erase yourself. Follow Jonathon on Twitter – @jonmedeiros or at jonathonmedeiros.com.

admin Modifying Modules, Modules and Minis

Let Sleeping Teenagers Lie

By Lori Campbell

When I consulted our Associate Superintendent of Business for the Kern High School District, Dr. Mike Zulfa, about the plans for how our district would comply with SB 328, he wrote, “So I am blaming you for all of this disruption! 😊” You see, I am the one who wrote the Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum module: “Teenage Sleepers: Arguing for Your Right to Sleep In.” 

Module Background

In the early stages of ERWC 3.0 development, I had proposed the module after watching the TED Talk with sleep expert Dr. Wendy Troxel, “Sleepy Teens: A Public Health Epidemic.” Troxel argues that the hormonal changes in teens cause them to reach REM sleep later than in adults and are not fully out of the sleep cycle until 90 minutes after adults are normally “awake.” She along with the PAC Start Schools Later fought for legislation that requires schools to start later in the morning for both middle-schoolers and high school students. I thought this would be a great topic of discussion for English 11 courses. It addressed all the points of an engaging module: all students could identify with the topic, there were definitely two contested sides of the issue, and students could actually participate in the political discussion. This module also introduces students to the construction of arguments. I never expected it to work so well! 

The Start Schools Later bill was first passed in the California legislature in 2018, but then (to my great relief) Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it citing that individual districts should decide what to do with the information. In fact, our district already provided online instruction as an option for students who had a difficult time functioning before 9:00 am. Students began their day at in-person schools during third period and took two of their classes online through the Kern Learn program–an independent studies program that offers UC-approved A-G coursework at the same rigor as the in-person classes on our school sites. The majority of assignments our students submit are completed between the hours of 5:00 pm and 3:00 am. They are pretty good, too! 

A Changing Context

Well, someone decided to try again when Governor Gavin Newsom was elected, and we all know what happened next. 

With the signing of SB 328 on October 19, 2019 (the month after the 3.0 modules were officially launched) middle school districts and high school districts in the state of California were given three years to figure out a plan to start their instruction no earlier than 8:00 am and 8:30 am respectively. And we also know what happened after that. COVID-19 and the subsequent quarantine and teach-from-home nightmare placed this legislation at the back of the implementation line. Coming out of the stupor in winter of 2021, districts realized they really hadn’t thought about what was needed to completely shift the school day to 90 minutes later. I know that the Board of Trustees and KHSD Superintendent, Dr. Bryan Schaefer, petitioned the governor vehemently to at least delay the implementation of the new schedules but to no avail. 

Modifying the Module

In the meantime, I wanted to look at my module and see what could be salvaged. Just like all good ERWC module topics, this subject is still timely. As furious as I was with Governor Newsom for creating this chaos, I finally realized that the implementation of this plan would still allow students to find their civic voices. In our second week of late-start implementation, the students are grumbling about as loudly as the teachers and parents. Football games are STARTING at 8:30 at night. Buses without air conditioning are transporting students home at the hottest hours in Bakersfield with highs of 103-108. Parents are having to shift their days completely if they need to pick up their students later in the day. Teachers who turn into instant moms and dads when they arrive home are more exhausted and have less time to prepare dinner. It’s a hot mess in Kern County. I can only imagine what it is like in your neck of the California woods. 

The changes we are going through add a new dimension to this module, and we will be entering a period of data gathering. After a year or two, we will be in the position to look at the results: have attendance rates improved? Has the mental health of teens overall improved? Are students more successful in middle-schools and high schools? I think there is still plenty to argue with this module. I have revised some texts, the prompt, and some of the activities to reflect the passage of SB 328. This includes adding the bill itself to the module allowing teachers the opportunity to add the format of a foundational document to their instruction. This Google Doc provides the modifications that I have made. I would love to have feedback from teachers and their students. I think with all of us caught in the maelstrom, we may actually be able to work together to determine the benefits (or detriments) of SB 328. While I deny all culpability in the passage of this bill (I wrote letters to both governors telling them this was a bad idea!), I still believe we can teach our students about their civic voices and how to use them. This is exactly what ERWC is all about.

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 10 years. She holds her master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction.

admin Course Design, Modules and Minis

Wanna Teach Hawkeye? Get the Books Now!

By Meline Akashian

There are two main audiences for this post:

  • 12th grade ERWC teachers who want to teach the “Hawkeye: Working Class Hero” module but have been told by their district librarians that the books could not be found, like, anywhere in the world.
  • 12th grade ERWC teachers who say, “There’s a Hawkeye module?” or even “What’s a Hawkeye module?”

“Hawkeye: Working Class Hero” is an ERWC 3.0 module for twelfth grade that got a late release; it did not appear on early module lists, so some ERWC teachers probably don’t know it exists. The module is based (suspend your judgment) on two comic books, issues from Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye series.

But for a year or more, many ERWC teachers who knew about the module and wanted to use it found it impossible to score class sets of the module’s core text, Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon Vol.1 (ISBN: 978-0785165620). This has to do with comics publishing patterns and Covid-19 paper shortages. But once it got on ERWC HQ’s radar that school districts were unable to buy these books, our resident superhero, Gwen Stephens, started making calls.

So cutting straight to the good news, Marvel is sending My Life as a Weapon Vol. 1 back to print. They say the book will be available by May, but even as I write this, on Amazon you can finally buy the book again. If you want to teach Hawkeye next year, let your powers-that-be know immediately so they can order the books. In many districts, district librarians (or whoever orders class sets) compile book orders for the upcoming school year in Spring – like, right now.

If you’ve never considered teaching the Hawkeye module, I hope you’ll take a look.

In the planning stages, we thought about basing this module around Issue #11, in which the entire narrative is told from the perspective of Hawkeye’s dog. We thought about basing the module around Issue #19 (in which our hero Clint Barton permanently loses most of his hearing), written entirely in American Sign Language. Just to say, the series’ creators play with perspective, and there is plenty to talk about with this Hawkeye series.

Nowadays, Hawkeye has his own movie and a new Disney+ show, but when Derek Heid and I started writing this module, Clint Barton was the unsung and relatively unknown Avenger, just a normal human being with really good aim. Fraction and Aja took an unexpected new perspective on that, too. What would it be like for Clint Barton, a regular guy, to hold his own in company with supers like Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man? (Spoiler: He gets hurt. A lot.) And the personality traits that allow him to be Hawkeye the Avenger – how would they play out in his day-to-day life? (Spoiler: He’s kind of a– well, you’ll see.)

Taking on those questions, the “Hawkeye: Working Class Hero” module asks students to examine how the creators subvert archetype and genre conventions to tell a new story. Among other things, you can look forward to students using Burke’s Pentad as a new strategy for analyzing rhetorical situation and characterization; learning disciplinary language and new strategies for analyzing images; and applying their analysis of genre and audience to a culminating presentation assignment. So if you’re worried that spending class-time on a couple of comic books is a disservice to your students, please trust me – your students’ brains will be busy.

Will you avoid this module because you and/or your students aren’t comics people? Please don’t. In the end, we wrote the module around the first two issues from the series, because this is how Issue #1 opens: “Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, became the greatest sharpshooter known to man. He then joined the Avengers. This is what he does when he is not being an Avenger. That’s all you need to know.” The sample answers in the module will help you when you need it, but honestly, part of the point of this module is to leverage your students’ visual literacy skills. Trust them.

The text message you see here is from my friend Cara. She is not a comics/graphic novel person, but she is an experienced ERWC teacher who happens to have her year-long course pathway published as a sample on the ERWC website. So if you’re interested to see how she fit the Hawkeye module into her year, take a look. It’s worth noting, she placed Hawkeye right in front of Hamlet because the work with Burke’s pentad (analyzing rhetorical situation to understand characters and their motivations) will transfer directly from one to the next.

Are you interested in using this module yet? Take a page from our guy Hawkeye: make the leap. But if that’s where you’re at, don’t forget, now is a good time to start the book order process. Marvel is sending the books back to press now, but, once they sell out this print run, we can’t be certain they’ll do the same again.

Meline Akashian is an experienced ERWC teacher with grades 7-12 and former Riverside County Teacher of the Year. She has co-written modules for ERWC and is a member of the ERWC Steering Committee.

Jeffery E. Frieden Modules and Minis, Podcast

Mini-Modules: Teaching for Transfer

Mini-Modules. What are they? How do they differ from full length centered on issues? And why are my students saying that these were the most fun out of all the modules I taught this past year?

All these questions are answered in this episode of The Teaching ERWC Podcast, where I talk with Nelson Graff of California State University, Monterey Bay. We clear up the purpose of Mini-Modules, how they can help us ERWC teachers stay accountable to teaching transferrable skills to our students, and why they are designed to be fun and memorable.

Want to contribute to the podcast?

The Teaching ERWC Podcast is produced, written, and developed by members of the ERWC Community, who is made up of many voices from many backgrounds. The community invites its members to be part of the content being produced here.

If you have any interest in contributing to the podcast, please fill out this Google Form.

Connect with ERWC on social media

admin Blog, Course Design, Modules and Minis

Picking Pathways

By Lori Campbell

My husband prefers to order fast food by numbers. He refuses to go to restaurants such as Chipotle because he has to make too many choices. I had the same reaction to the list of possible modules available in ERWC 3.0. In this column, we have the book modules, in the next we find the dramas, and now for the protein–we find 12 juicy issue modules. Don’t forget the mini-modules to support the best balance to put before our seniors. It can be daunting if we don’t already know our students’ needs and preferences. However, the choices mean that we can serve a curriculum that is custom built to provide opportunities for engagement, critical thinking skills, and, most importantly, the confidence to enter the world of adults. 

I appreciate the choice of  modules that are similarly available for the 11th grade year. I can spend that year introducing the basic skills that can bridge the wide gap between the 9/10 standards and the 11/12 standards. I am also able to extend the reach of the mini-modules so that we can build on the foundational skills when they become seniors. That 12th grade year imposes certain challenges for both teachers and students in the forms of applying to colleges, applying for financial aid, enjoying senior activities, and, in some cases, “senioritis.” I believe that senior year, and particularly the second semester, requires the most thought as teachers plan for these “soon-to-be” adults.  

I begin second semester with “Big Brother and the Authoritarian Surveillance State: 1984.” This is where I place the highest rigor because senioritis really hasn’t hit yet. FAFSAs have been completed. Hopefully, even the most procrastinating seniors have sent in college applications by this time. This is a remarkable season of maturity. It’s a decompression period for most seniors who can sit still for a time and focus on the important issues of the novel and its application to modern society. 

Then by the end of February, the pressure builds for my seniors. At this point, I want to provide my students material that gives them the opportunity to reflect on the society they are about to enter as adults and their positions in that community.  I next pair “Introducing Kairos” with “On Leaving|On Staying Behind.” The rhetorical concept of kairos, or situational time, also helps students recognize their current states. We can talk about why they might be feeling so unhinged and whether the certain decisions they make now really have a lasting impact on their lives.

Then the content of Diana Garcia’s poems on emigration provide students with a new perspective when they look at the daughter making her own decision to leave home. They find strength in this, and when it is time to write pieces about their own decisions, they feel a little better about them. The module provides several choices of a creative nature for the culminating writing task. Seniors appreciate this new opportunity because it is not “one more essay.” Writing poems that express their own social concern taps into a different part of their brain that they don’t often get the chance to use.

Finally, I pair “Introducing Stasis Theory” with “Language, Culture, and Gender.” This is the perfect combination to help seniors enter that adult world with a plan. I also love the latter module because I can use this as a final exam for students since there are several texts. I ask seniors to apply the strategies they have learned for the past two years, including descriptive outlines, rhetorical precis, annotation, and annotated bibliography to analyze the articles. They must be able to use these tools to grasp the claims and rhetorical strategies of any text they are given now or in the future. They are free to choose the order in which they read and analyze the texts and which tool best fits for them. They discuss the value of each of the ways to analyze a text and why a certain one works for them. The hope is they will carry those tools into college. In addition, the culminating task of this module helps students recognize the importance of their compassion, their voices, and their skills in examining multiple perspectives. Finally, students wrap up the senior year with the Final Reflection portfolio to show them they are indeed ready for the next academic step they take.

In the 10 years I have taught ERWC, I believe part of what we need to impart is confidence, and between March and May in a senior’s life, that gets lost along with the student’s assignments. That final pathway should put the finishing touches on skills, but, more importantly, convince students that they are worthy of the diploma they are about to receive. I believe selecting the modules that can boost their confidence and not pressure them more than necessary will ease the tension. Once these young people adjust to the pressure placed on them by “adulthood,” they will be able to explore the  wonders of their new world beyond high school. 

Work Cited

“Senioritis.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/senioritis. Accessed 29 Jan. 2021.

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 10 years. She holds her master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction.

admin Blog, Course Design, Modules and Minis

Choosing Your Own ERWC Adventure

By Jennifer Fletcher

As an 80s kid, I well remember the joys of reading Edward Packard’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of books. There was something thrilling–and slightly subversive–about being in control of the narrative. Choice confers power. It’s one thing to be the person just following the script, quite another to be a co-constructor of meaning.

This is what I love about ERWC: through the choices they make about learning goals and experiences, teachers and students act as co-designers of the implemented curriculum. One of the exciting changes to ERWC is that teachers now have the opportunity to create their own customized pathways from a wide selection of modules. ERWC 3.0 is the DIY ERWC. The new curriculum includes over sixty full-length modules for grades eleven and twelve, fourteen mini-modules, and nine full-length modules for grades nine and ten. Teachers now choose five to six full-length modules and five mini-modules (including two portfolio modules) to create a yearlong course.

If you are building your own ERWC 3.0 course for the first time, you might want to experiment with different combinations of modules before deciding on an instructional sequence. Each pathway has its own flavor and rhythm. Try starting by pairing full-length modules with mini-modules that foster rhetorical thinking. “Introducing the Rhetorical Situation,” “Introducing Ethos, Pathos, and Logos,” and “Introducing Genre as Rhetoric” make a great starter kit.

As you design your yearlong experience, you’ll also find that different pathways are driven by different areas of emphasis. Some, for instance, might have a special emphasis on particular literacy skills, such as argumentation or genre analysis, while others might focus on a theme, such as social justice, adolescence, or the environment. It will be up to you to create a cohesive, progressive course suited to your students’ needs and interests.

Keep in mind that you will probably need to add or remove scaffolding depending on your module sequence. Your students should need less support as the year progresses. That means that you might be able to drop more activities from the later modules, provided your students are already doing things like surveying and annotating texts on their own. If, however, you find that students still need lots of support for reading and writing rhetorically, you’ll want to continue modeling and practicing these skills in class.

ERWC 3.0 offers a “choose your own adventure” approach to curriculum and instruction. The pathway you choose should take you and your students on a meaningful intellectual journey.

A final bit of advice and encouragement as you embark on this adventure:

  • The repeated turns through the ERWC arc are strategic and intentional. Allow time for the spiraling; extended practice leads to automaticity.
  • Know that you and your students will experience productive struggle. Resist the urge to slip back to your comfort zone. Productive struggle is the path to mastery.
  • Remember that the curriculum runs on inquiry and discussion. Expand opportunities for students to interact with their peers and do their own thinking.
  • Read the Teacher Versions, Module Overviews, and Module Plans. They’re your guides to instructional decision making.
  • If you’re taking a student-centered, inquiry-based, rhetorical approach to texts, you’re doing ERWC!

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 at @JenJFletcher.