Practical Writing
Practical Writing Course Content Framework
Target Population
Practical writing students are those who have not met standard on STAAR reading or writing and/or students who have been identified as reading two or more years below grade level. STAAR Tests taken into consideration of student ability may include grade 8 reading, grade 7 writing, and/or EOC for English I and II. Grade and performance levels of students may be mixed within a practical writing section, as the course is an individualized program to meet students’ needs.
Considerations for student placement:
Future Recommendations
This course intended to be tiered according to students’ needs and levels, with the practical writing course recommended to begin at the tenth grade year or above. Course sections are suggested to be comprised of 15-20 students.
Course Description
This course is designed to prepare students to become more adept adolescent writers who write purposefully and use writing as a tool for learning and thinking. Learning to write effectively has advantages such as allowing greater precision in communicating ideas and cultivating complex thought. As individuals improve their writing abilities, they improve the ability to think – to build an argument, to frame issues in compelling ways, and to synthesize ideas from multiple texts. Writing has evolved with technological innovations, which has greatly influenced the types of texts that writers produce. This course will engage students with opportunities to develop their writing skills through reading and analyzing model texts, participating in the writing process, and collaborating with peers.
Course Goals Overview
The primary goal of the Round Rock ISD Practical Writing course is to provide opportunities for students to practice critical thinking and the writing and revising skills necessary for clear and focused personal, academic, and workplace writing. In addition, this course will allow students to practice writing as a tool to strengthen thinking, learning, and communication skills. Ultimately, each student enrolled in the class will be encouraged to adopt “habits of mind” to enhance his or her literacy skills through reading, writing, revising, editing, and responding to a variety of written forms and tasks.
Habits of Mind
Habits of mind refers to ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical and that will support students’ success in this course, as well as in other content areas. The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing identifies eight habits of mind essential for academic success:
Student Learning Objectives and Expectations (presented in the order of the TEKS):
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to meet the learning outcomes provided by instruction in this course:
Considerations for student placement:
- Identified need for enhanced instruction to improve literacy skills
- Collective assessment scores (e.g., STAAR, District Common Assessments, AIMSWeb, SRI etc.)
- Evaluation of writing samples/Portfolio review
- Individual Education Plan (IEP) recommendations
Future Recommendations
This course intended to be tiered according to students’ needs and levels, with the practical writing course recommended to begin at the tenth grade year or above. Course sections are suggested to be comprised of 15-20 students.
Course Description
This course is designed to prepare students to become more adept adolescent writers who write purposefully and use writing as a tool for learning and thinking. Learning to write effectively has advantages such as allowing greater precision in communicating ideas and cultivating complex thought. As individuals improve their writing abilities, they improve the ability to think – to build an argument, to frame issues in compelling ways, and to synthesize ideas from multiple texts. Writing has evolved with technological innovations, which has greatly influenced the types of texts that writers produce. This course will engage students with opportunities to develop their writing skills through reading and analyzing model texts, participating in the writing process, and collaborating with peers.
Course Goals Overview
The primary goal of the Round Rock ISD Practical Writing course is to provide opportunities for students to practice critical thinking and the writing and revising skills necessary for clear and focused personal, academic, and workplace writing. In addition, this course will allow students to practice writing as a tool to strengthen thinking, learning, and communication skills. Ultimately, each student enrolled in the class will be encouraged to adopt “habits of mind” to enhance his or her literacy skills through reading, writing, revising, editing, and responding to a variety of written forms and tasks.
Habits of Mind
Habits of mind refers to ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical and that will support students’ success in this course, as well as in other content areas. The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing identifies eight habits of mind essential for academic success:
- Curiosity – the desire to know more about the world.
- Openness – the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.
- Engagement – a sense of investment and involvement in learning.
- Creativity – the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas.
- Persistence – the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.
- Responsibility – the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others.
- Flexibility – the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.
- Metacognition – the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.
- Council of Writing Program Administrators
Student Learning Objectives and Expectations (presented in the order of the TEKS):
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to meet the learning outcomes provided by instruction in this course:
- Use the conventions and mechanics of written English to communicate clearly including capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.
- Produce error-free writing by demonstrating control over grammatical elements such as subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, and appropriate verb forms.
- Use varied sentence structures to express meanings and achieve desired effect.
- Use recursive writing processes as appropriate, including pre-writing strategies and developing drafts by organizing ideas, such as paragraphing, outlining, adding, and deleting.
- Use appropriate vocabulary, sentence structure (syntax), organization, and rhetorical devices appropriate to audience and purpose.
- Use effective sequence and transitions to achieve coherency.
- Revise drafts by rethinking content, organization, and style to better accomplish the task and edit as appropriate.
- Use resources such as texts and other people as needed for proofreading, editing, and revising.
- Use available technology for creating, revising, editing, and publishing texts.
- Read for a variety of audiences and purposes including reading and writing informational texts.
- Practice effective, efficient note taking.
- Analyze and discuss published pieces as writing models and review written work to determine its strengths and weaknesses and to set goals as a writer.
- Evaluate his/her own writing and the writing of others including how well the writing achieves its purposes.
- Analyze informational text and use effective reading strategies to determine a written work's purpose and intended audience (e.g., identifies explicit and implicit textual information, including main ideas and author's purpose, draws and supports complex inferences from text to distinguish facts from opinions, analyzes the author's quality of evidence for an argument, evaluates the use of both literal and figurative language, analyzes the audience and purpose of informational and persuasive text, analyzes how an author's use of language creates imagery and mood, and analyzes insights gained from text to text, text to self, and text to world).
- Understand new vocabulary and concepts, and use them accurately in reading, speaking, and writing (e.g., applies knowledge of roots and affixes to infer the meanings of new words and uses reference guides to confirm the meanings of new words and concepts).
Department Grading Policy:
40% Daily grades
60% Major grades
Late Daily Work: Late daily work is not accepted unless a student has an excused absence or a class coupon. If I decide accept late daily work, a student can turn it in the next calendar day for a 70, or for a 50 during the next block.
Late Major Work:
One day late= 85% of points possible
One block late= 70% of points possible
Two days late= 50% of points possible
Cell Phones and Technology -Cell phones aren’t permitted in class without permission. The first two times I catch you using your phone, you’ll be warned. If I catch you a third time, I’ll confiscate your phone for the class period and make a phone call home. If I catch you more than third time, I’ll have to confiscate your phone and take it to the vault. If you refuse to give me your phone, expect to get a referral. The same rules apply to laptops and other technological devices.
(Adapted from Ms. Cano's Syllabus)
Classroom Norms
Expectations- Be prompt. Be prepared. Be polite, respectful, positive and productive. Self-Advocate.
40% Daily grades
60% Major grades
Late Daily Work: Late daily work is not accepted unless a student has an excused absence or a class coupon. If I decide accept late daily work, a student can turn it in the next calendar day for a 70, or for a 50 during the next block.
Late Major Work:
One day late= 85% of points possible
One block late= 70% of points possible
Two days late= 50% of points possible
Cell Phones and Technology -Cell phones aren’t permitted in class without permission. The first two times I catch you using your phone, you’ll be warned. If I catch you a third time, I’ll confiscate your phone for the class period and make a phone call home. If I catch you more than third time, I’ll have to confiscate your phone and take it to the vault. If you refuse to give me your phone, expect to get a referral. The same rules apply to laptops and other technological devices.
(Adapted from Ms. Cano's Syllabus)
Classroom Norms
Expectations- Be prompt. Be prepared. Be polite, respectful, positive and productive. Self-Advocate.