Writing for Common Core (OAS) in the HS Classroom

         By using texts* while teaching writing and requiring students to respond to texts in writing, the process of reading, analyzing, and reflecting on texts has a flow to it that sometimes has been found missing as when I and others previously truncated teaching into sections by unit.  Reading and analyzing literature or non-fiction should happen in the course of writing about the texts.  By segregating the analysis of literature from the analysis of non-fiction, from the analysis of poetry, from the writing process, our students do not understand the fluid relationship between reading and the analytical process. 
     As students are exposed to this process, they will see connections and will clarify the expectations for analysis that can support all content areas.  Not only will this process help students in secondary schools, but it will also help them as they transfer to college.  In composition I & II, students are required to read a text and respond to that text in some way using evidence from the text to support their conclusions.  In life, we are often asked our opinion on topics, and the best responses are supported by evidence.  This is a life skill, as well as a reading skill, as well as a testing skill.               
     OAS** requires students to write about texts they have read.  The assessment focus for OAS is on persuasive / argumentative writing.  In order for our teachers to teach writing in a way that will support this focus, we need to have excerpts of texts or short texts for our students to respond to writing prompts related to those texts.  Does that mean we no longer teach how to write - heavens no.  However, if we combine teaching how to write with responses to texts, we will be making the most of limited class time in order to teach all we must. 
     In order to give a more clear picture of what I mean, I will provide an example of how I would teach this.  (By no means is this the only way to teach writing with OAS.)  I would take a week to review the basics of writing.  The school I am at uses the Schaffer paragraph writing model, but all English teachers know how to teach paragraph / essay writing.  After a week of teaching / reviewing the basics of writing, I would take a text (or excerpt) and prepare a writing prompt for students to respond to using the text.  Good places to look for examples of writing prompts are parcconline.org and smarterbalenced.org: look for their item prototypes.  These are the two national testing consortiums for CCSS. Here is a specific example from PARCC for 10th grade English:

Use what you have learned from reading "Daedalus and Icarus" by Ovid and "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph" by Anne Sexton to write an essay that provides an analysis of how Sexton transforms Dadedalus and Icarus.

As a starting point, you may want to consider what is emphasized, absent, or different in the two texts, but feel free to develop your own focus for analysis.

Develop your essay by providing textual evidence from both texts.  Be sure to follow the conventions of standard English.

As you can see, students are required to synthesize information from two different texts in order to answer the prompt asking students to identify changes from the original mythological story to Sexton's poem. 

     Should I want to change this up a bit, I might use The Cask of Amontillado by Poe and Those Winter Sundays by Hayden.  I would plan a week to two to have students read the short story, the poem, and write their paper.   As a class, I would read the story.  I would then group students together to analyze and annotate the story for genre, theme, mood, tone, imagery, and diction at a minimum (OK PASS standards 2.2, 2.4, 3.2, 3.3 & CC standard RL.9-10.1).  I would do the same with the poem except I would add analyze and annotate for poetic devices to the other items.  I would follow this up with a prompt: "Using both texts - The Cask of Amontillado and Those Winter Sundays - discuss how people can often be different than what they seem.  Please explain the differences from appearance to reality in both texts using textual evidence to support your statements."  This prompt would relate to PASS writing and grammar standards as well as 2.1, 2.2, and 2.4 and CC standards RL.9-10.1, RL.9-10.2, and RL.9-10.7. 

     Reading in the secondary English classroom should not be limited to excerpts: extended texts, plays, novels, articles, and poems all have their place within teaching.  However, excerpts can be used successfully in the classroom.  Teaching the writing process using excerpts, I believe, will deepen student engagement, understanding, and involvement in content standards within each content area. 

                     *I use text(s) in this blog to mean fiction, non-fiction, poems, novels, ect.

                                        **Oklahoma Academic Standards (OAS)