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.

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cstreetfullertonedu Blog, Reading Rhetorically, Writing Rhetorically

Reading Like an Author

By Chris Street

Have you ever tried to explain to someone else why you liked a particular piece of writing? It can be difficult to find the language needed to explain exactly why a particular piece resonated with you. Trying to discern how authors make their writing powerful, beautiful, emotional, or descriptive is tough to do.

Yet when we demystify authors’ styles we can learn how writers accomplish the incredible things they do with words. For example, by looking at how writers use active verbs, sentence variety, precise nouns, rhythms of language, vocabulary, organizational schemes, sensory details, repetition, parallel structures, and punctuation—we can begin to acquire the language needed to discuss the ways in which their writing appeals to us.

Another way to consider this is to ask yourself a question: If you were going to replicate the style of a piece of writing that you admire without copying the exact words, how would you do it? It’s not easy to focus your attention to look at a piece of writing this way, but this is what careful readers do when they are trying to learn the craft of writing.

Reading like an author is a skill that all aspiring writers learn to do. Reading like an author helps you to discover different stylistic devices, find various ways to engage readers, and leaves you with a greater awareness of how to target your writing for specific audiences.

As teachers you are all already accomplished readers. Now, I’d invite you to try reading like an author.

For teachers interested in learning to write articles for publication in professional journals this would mean reading the kinds of journals that might publish one’s work. For teachers more interested in writing successful grant proposals this might mean reading previously funded grant proposals as a way to internalize the features of writing that separate the successful from the unsuccessful proposals. The same would be true of aspiring bloggers or web site developers. The models are all around us. All we need to do is read them carefully—as potential authors—and we will surely learn important lessons about the craft of writing.

Since part of our work as English teachers is to support students as they strive to make connections between the texts they read and the writers we want them to appreciate, we can apprentice students in the task of reading like an author by modeling for them how this text-based task is performed. As with all complex literacy tasks, learning to read like an author takes time and guidance. The strategic guidance we can offer students is that much more powerful when we are able to model for students what it means to “think rhetorically,” as an author would. As we uncover the power of an author’s craft for students, we enable students to feel that they are personally part of a larger discourse community, or conversation. And when we help unlock the power behind an author’s words, we allow students to feel they have increased power over the texts they read. Reading like an author can indeed be a transformative event for developing writers, allowing them to see themselves as rhetorical writers who can apply their newly learned skills as they write with increased confidence, skill, and power.

But students are not likely to learn to read like an author unless we model for them what this looks like. As an example, here’s one of my favorite pieces of writing and a few words describing why I like it:

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.” (The Outsiders)

The opening words to S.E. Hinton’s short novel immediately ensnare me in her world—the world of a teenager coming to grips with a gritty reality. The crisp words offer a glimpse of the main character and narrator while hinting at the struggle of good versus evil that will occupy the mind of the young story teller.

Hers is a book that tells the truth about life through a teenager’s eyes. The eyes that adjust to the bright sun are Hinton’s eyes, the eyes of a teenager who wrote The Outsiders “because I wanted to read it.”

Using just 29 words, she makes me feel the same way.

Chris Street is a Professor of Secondary Education at California State University, Fullerton, where he also directs the masters program in secondary education. He helps lead the statewide implementation of ERWC as a professional learning facilitator, module author, and member of the ERWC Steering Committee.