Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion the student will be able to:

• Use and understand pre-writing and pre-reading strategies to identify, clarify, and or prepare for any reading or writing activity.
• Incorporate fluency and new vocabulary into daily and academic reading and writing.
• Apply a range of strategies including activating prior knowledge and cultural understanding to monitor and enhance comprehension.
• Utilize steps in the writing process and apply the appropriate English language conventions in daily and academic writing.
• Apply critical thinking in written responses to a text or prompt.
• Apply improved communication skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking).

• Exhibit persistence, self-motivation, self-advocacy, and personal responsibility
• Reflect upon, assess, identify, and celebrate one’s own learning gains
• Explore, develop, and monitor appropriate academic and professional goals
• Advance knowledge and skills to make independent choices as a citizen, family member, worker, and life-long learner

• Complete CASAS reading test
• Create writing portfolios, including reflections, drafts that show evidence of revising and editing
• Write paragraphs, short essays, letters, poems, journal entries, notes, annotations
• Graph reading rate
• Develop projects, presentations, and debates
• Complete Reading with Understanding Diary
• Assess comprehension with quizzes, multiple choice questions, written response and discussion questions
• Reading journal
• ABE Intermediate In-Class Reading and Writing Assessment
• Guided note taking and short discussions in response to videos
• Complete a computer-based assignment

Themes: Family, Citizen, Lifelong Learner, Worker, Social Studies, Science, Metacognition
Concepts: goal setting, critical thinking, decision making, confidence building, collaborative teamwork, student success skills, cultural literacy, media literacy
Issues: barriers to student success, access to resources, communication skills, learning differences, test and school anxiety, and behavior appropriate to academic and professional settings

Skills:

• Awareness of writing as a process (planning, developing, organizing, revising, editing)
• Develop writing content and style in a way that serves the purpose
• Draw on prior experience, new knowledge and one’s own questions, interests and observations to generate ideas
• Use one or more strategies to plan and organize text
• Develop and organize ideas logically in a simple academic or creative text
• Introduce a topic clearly and sequence ideas logically with a beginning middle and end 
• Use basic and some complex grammar to construct sentences and linked paragraphs
• Use everyday and some academic vocabulary related to a broad range of topics and contexts
• Express one’s thought and ideas in a way that demonstrates attention to the purpose, context and audience.
• Consider and apply feedback from self and others to remove barriers to reader comprehension and better address the writing purpose
• Use writing conventions appropriate for simple and some complex text types
• Proofread and apply knowledge of basic conventions to enhance reader understanding
• Write using a variety of technologies and digital media
• Carry out writing tasks that require short, simple explanation
• Use a variety of strategies to reinforce writing development
• Appraise own writing skills and abilities and those of others through revision/editing process
• Revise and/or edit written work from self-review, peer or instructor feedback
• Summarize ideas in a text
• Read regularly for own purposes
• Identify, clarify, and/or prepare for reading purpose
• Monitor comprehension and adjust reading strategies
• Pronounce on sight words, and abbreviations found in simple and everyday texts related to areas of interest or study
• Recognize on sight syllable patterns/types, root words, and affixes in common words
• Acquire and apply meanings of words and phrases found in simple and everyday texts related to personal interest
• Accurately read aloud text composed of simple, compound and short complex sentences with appropriate pacing, phrasing, and expression
• Apply prior knowledge of the content and situation, including cultural understanding, to support comprehension
• Use textual evidence to analyze the content and reflect on the underlying meanings
• Use strategies in combination to pronounce and/or discern the meanings of unfamiliar words found in a simple text
• Choose from a range of simple strategies and integrate them to monitor and/or enhance text comprehension, (eg: use knowledge of common text formats and text features, make inferences, retell, reread, use simple graphic organizers, discuss with others, make a mental picture, use simple text markings like highlighting, underlining, noting personal reactions/questions)
• Locate, analyze, and critique stated and implied information and/or ideas simple functional, informational, or persuasive text
• Identify the topic, stated main idea, or central claim, and key details within a short text
• Evaluate the reliability, accuracy and sufficiency of information and claims, (eg: checking for missing details, distinguishing fact vs. opinion, identifying misleading statements)
• Draw conclusions related to the common structural elements of a simple literary work
• Identify, interpret and appreciate an authors use of language and simple literary techniques
• Connect people/characters, events, information, ideas, or themes presented in one text with those in other texts and/or in real life to address the reading purpose
• Recognize compare/contrast and cause/effect