Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon successful completion the student will be able to:

• Use and understand the pre-writing and pre-reading strategies to identify, clarify, and or prepare for the purpose of 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).

• Complete CASAS Reading Test
• Create Writing portfolios, including reflections, drafts that show evidence of editing and revising
• Write paragraphs, short essays, letters, poems, journal entries
• 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

Themes: Family, Citizen, Lifelong Learner, Worker
Concepts :goal setting, critical thinking, decision making, confidence building, collaborative team work
Issues: barriers to student success, access to resources, communication skills, learning differences, test and school anxiety
Skills:

• Awareness of writing as a process
• Develop writing content and style in a way that serves the purpose
• Understand distinct English conventions
• Appraise own writing skills and abilities and those of others through revision process
• Revise written work from peer or instructor feedback
• Summarize ideas in a text
• Read regularly for own purposes
• Identify, clarify, and/or prepare for reading purpose
• 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 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
• Locate, analyze, and critique stated implied information and/or ideas simple functional, informational, or persuasive text
• Draw conclusions related to the common structural elements of a simple literary work
• Identify, interpret and appreciate an author’s 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