Day One: Grades (3 lessons on this task) Reading and Writing for information and understanding. Overview

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1 Day One: Grades 9-11 (3 lessons on this task) Reading and Writing for information and understanding Overview The assignments over the next 5 days will require the use of your skills in reading and writing for information and understanding. You will read an informational article accompanied by a chart or some other graphic presentation, answer ten multiple-choice questions and write an informational or persuasive piece expressing a point of view and recommendation based on the text. Objective: Understanding the purpose of different informational texts Informational texts are based on facts and there are many different types. Each type has a specific purpose or reason for being. It is important as a reader to know the purpose of each of the different types of texts. Try to figure out the purpose for these types of informational texts. 1. Persuasive Essay/ Newspaper Editorial Purpose: 2. Scientific Article: Purpose: 3. Historical Article Purpose: 4. Biography Purpose: 5. Procedural or Instructional Text Purpose: 6. Advertisements and Brochures Purpose:

2 Once you are able to identify the purpose of each of the texts, find an informational text that you are interested in and read it. After you read the text identify five elements that are related to the purpose of that specific type of informational text. Reflection: Did knowing about the writing help you understand the text? Explain in about a paragraph. What type of informational text do you find most challenging? Why? Explain.

3 Day Two: Grades 9-11 Reading and Writing for information and understanding Go to the New York State Department of Education website to review previous Regents exams: Find the last English Regents from January 2009 and go to Session 1, Part B on page 5. Steps to approach the task: Look at the text and identify the type of informational text. This will help you determine the purpose of the text. Read the task and then read the subheadings of the text to determine the organization of the text. Read the text and circle or underline the main idea in each paragraph. After the first reading look over and read the multiple choice questions and try and answer the ones you know and identify the questions you are unsure of or don t know the answer to. Read the text the second time to reach a deeper understanding and figure out the answers for the multiple choice questions. Go back and read the task. What is required in your essay? You have been asked to write a persuasive letter. Steps to consider as you approach the persuasive letter (the task asks for the body of the letter this is an essay!) You will need a clear thesis statement. Read the rest of the text to see how you are going to persuade or convince your reader about: Your Task: Using relevant information from the text and the table in Session 1, Part B, write a letter to the director of the local agency in which you persuade the agency to consider straw bales as a future construction material. List three reasons why straw bales should be used in construction. Make sure one of the reasons is from the Table: Life-Cycle Costs of a House.. Create an outline to organize your essay and then write your essay.

4 Day 3: Grades 9-11 Grading your essay and revising After you complete your essay, grade your essay based on the rubric provided on the website and look at some sample student essays that got high grades (5 or 6). Reflection: What grade did you give your essay? How does your essay compare to the sample high scoring essays? What could you do to improve your essay? List three areas on the rubric. What did you learn about yourself from this activity as reader and writer? How will you work on improving reading and writing skills? Activity: After you identify the areas in your essay select two areas/sections that need improvement and try to revise by adding more details or clarifying etc. (depending on what is needed). Use the high scoring sample essays as your guide. After you make the changes to your essay, read your essay aloud and grade it again against the rubric.

5 Day 1: Grade 12 Beginning of Biography Essay What is the importance of a name? Objective: Identify elements of characterization by using personal student writing Make interpersonal connection with literature Beginning activity of biographical college essay Read: The chapter titled My Name from House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, which you can find at: Complete the table below on What is the importance of a name? This should provide suggestions for discussion and writing.

6 1. What is your full legal name? What is the importance of a name? 2. What is the origin or meaning of your name? 3. How and why did your parents select this name for you? 4. What if any nicknames have you had and how did they come about? 5. Has your name influenced your life in any manner? Explain 6. Is there a name you like better? What is it and why? 7. Is there any family history behind your name? If so, explain. Procedure: After you finish the handout, review you answers and compile them into a few paragraphs that relate a story about your name. Extension: After you finish, try to share your personal writing with some family members and ask them to provide input or comments. You may find more or different stories that you had not heard before. You could also expand the story to include another family member, for example. your mother, father or sibling.

7 Days Two and Three: Grade 12 Analyze advertising methods and practice rhetorical approaches in persuasive writing. Project: Creating an advertisement campaign using rhetorical appeals Preparation: Review of the four rhetorical appeals: Logos, Pathos, Ethos and Mythos Brief explanation: Rhetoric (n) - the art of speaking or writing effectively. (Webster's Definition) According to Aristotle, rhetoric is "the ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion." He described three main forms of rhetoric: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Ethos: Ethos is appeal based on the character of the speaker. An ethos-driven document relies on the reputation of the author. Logos: Logos is appeal based on logic or reason. Documents distributed by companies or corporations are logos-driven. Scholarly documents are also often logos-driven. Pathos: Pathos is appeal based on emotion. Advertisements tend to be pathos-driven. You could also consider a fourth element sometimes added to the Rhetorical Triangle: Mythos: Mythos is an appeal to tradition. Is the author trying to convince you that that s just the way we do it? That violating tradition with new thinking or any departure in behavior is just not appropriate. Is that an effective strategy? Rhetorical appeals can be achieved through writing and: Visual Information Structure; this includes how the text looks on the screen. This is achieved through the appearance of such things as the titles and the headings. Color; this includes the color of the text, the background, and the graphics. The contrast of the colors of each of these items is also important. Graphic Images; this includes the other information in the document aside from the text. This is achieved through such things as icons, buttons, and photos.

8 Advertising Assignment Your task: Company A (identified by you) has hired you as a marketing consultant. You are to review existing brands and advertising techniques in the product field and create a new marketing campaign. Here are some examples of product fields but you can come up with your own. Entertainment: movies, TV shows or video games Automotive: cars, trucks etc Food and Beverage: package foods, restaurants and grocery weight-loss and exercise products and programs Beauty Products: hair, skin etc Political Candidates Credit Cards, Banking and Financial Services Pharmaceuticals: medicines etc. Part One: Report and analysis of product field You can select to market an existing product or create an entirely new company. After you determine the product you will be marketing, perform a brief survey of the current array of choices the consumer has in that field. You will need to identify the basic differences among the brands. Part Two: Review the advertising campaigns Perform a detailed analysis of three brands advertising methods and campaigns. In your analysis, comment on how both verbal and visual techniques use the four rhetorical appeals. (See above for definition and explanation.) Look at the demographic profile of the audience being targeted (race, age, gender, urban/suburban, geographic region etc.) Discuss the tone each company takes towards its audience and its competitors. You may also want to ask friends and relatives who fall under the targeted demographic how they view the brand.

9 Part Three: Design a new campaign As you complete analyzing your company s competitors, and market and design a comprehensive advertising campaign for you company s product. You should keep the following in mind: What type of media will be used. Also consider venues. Write down the rhetorical appeals you have used in the advertising and how that will appeal to your targeted demographic and improve sales.

10 Day 4: Grades 9-12 Academic Vocabulary The words listed below are commonly used in the directions for exams and assignments and often times they are hard to understand. Your task is to find the definitions of the words and write them in terms that you can understand. Look at the example for the word analyze and complete the rest of the words. Analyze What are the details? Write obvious and hidden meanings of the text and explain how each part helps or fits into the larger text. Argue Compare Contrast Define. Demonstrate Describe Discuss Explain Identify Interpret List Outline Plot Summarize After you complete the definitions, keep them and use them as a resource during class. As you get comfortable with each of the words and their meanings, you will not need your list because you will have learned them!

11 Day 5: Grades 9-12 Literary Elements: Tone and Mood Objective: Understanding how to identify mood and tone in literary works Focus: Literary response and critical reading What is tone and mood? Tone: is the attitude of the speaker toward the reader or listener and toward a subject. Mood: the mood about a piece of writing is also connected to tone; however it refers to the general feeling created by the piece of writing. Activity: Read the passage below Beyond What Words Can Capture. Based on the definitions that are given above, make a list of words used in this story that capture the tone and mood. Make a T-chart and place tone words in the left column and mood words in the right column. Use this list and write three paragraphs on how the tone and mood words conveyed the message the author wanted to present.

12 BEYOND WHAT WORDS CAN CAPTURE I knelt, head bowed. My mind was in explosion mode. My world had been rocked and would never be the same again. My lips moved, but no one heard my words. A wet stream channeled itself across my cheek. Thoughts came only intermittently since they were so painful. Why the pained look? my favorite friend, Charisse, spoke as she sat next to me on the school lawn near the auditorium. I had not heard her come up, so her words were like echoes coming out of a canyon close by. I did manage to turn my head to her, but her words could not intrude into the sacred, kneeling image frozen in my mind. I know a little about pained looks, she spoke softly. She took my hand from my knee, clasped it inside both of hers for several minutes while she talked, then returned it. I didn t notice her smile or recognize her voice immediately, but somehow I surmised a friendly face from the almost unnoticeable squeeze that I had felt on my hand in her clasp. Her echoing words finally worked their way through my subconscious mind into my conscious awareness, but I couldn t unfreeze the image in my mind s eye to return a response. I merely nodded affirmatively. She saw the glistening traces channeled under my eyes and continued talking gently. I noticed you over here sitting under the statue of our mascot and didn t recall you ever sitting here before. What s going on? The image in my mind dissipated much like a computer virus depixelates an icon on the screen. I heard Charisse s words this time. Nothing much, I answered in a low tone. I was just flashing back to a time three years ago. It was the saddest time in my life. I rubbed my sparkling eyes with my shirt sleeve, embarrassed that someone had seen me cry. Every so often I find I can t control these mental images. This was just one of those times. Sorry. No apology necessary, Charisse said reassuringly. I don t know what your sad time is, but I have had a few of them myself. I can t help replaying them. Whenever that happens, I have to stop what I m doing until those moments pass. I know what you mean. I was glad to have a friend empathize with me. Although Charisse was my favorite friend, she had come to my school just this year. I didn t know her past, so I did not know what she meant when she said that she knew about pained looks.

13 She must have sensed my thoughts because she began recounting an episode from her seventh grade year. We had gone skiing on Christmas day during the seventh grade. I had brought my closest friend with me on the trip. Mom and dad had let us ski several times down the blue, intermediate slopes with them. When they thought we could handle the difficulty of the level by ourselves, they let the two of us go without them. Her eyes stared away for a moment as if she were truly seeing the slopes of Colorado. Then she glanced back at my face and kept talking. We skied for about two hours by ourselves, laughing at each other every time we fell and running into each other on purpose just to make the other one fall. We decided to be brave the last time down the mountain before going in for the night, so we agreed that the last one down the mountain had to take the last shower (which would probably mean a cold shower). My friend was more adventurous than I was because she wanted to ski close to the ridge that separated the slope from the drop-off of about thirty feet. I was skiing a little behind her, so I saw the whole thing happen. She leaned too far toward the ridge and then flipped over it. I could hear her screaming as she fell. Her screams seemed to last for 30 minutes, but I know that they lasted only about 15 seconds. Charisse paused. She shook her head several times. I knew she was reliving her friend s pain during this moment even though she was not putting thought to words. She began again, It looked like she had died in the window of time it took me to ski down to her from the top of the ridge. I frantically called her name over and over. She didn t move. All skiers are given a cell phone number to call if help is needed when they buy lift tickets. So, I reached in my pocket and pulled the number out. Then, I heard her moaning in the snow. I didn t see any blood, fortunately, or I might have fainted. I called for help and stayed by my friend until the hospital team arrived. I thought this story had a good ending, so I started wondering why Charisse had told me she knew about pain. But I ended this thought when Charisse again picked up where she had left off on her story. The moaning I heard stopped before the hospital team got to the spot. My friend lay pretty motionless. At the bottom of the slope, my parents, of course, were waiting for us. The hospital team apprised them of my account of the accident and took her on to the hospital. We followed right behind the ambulance. When the doctors came to talk to us in the waiting room, they informed us that my friend had slipped into a coma. My parents had to explain to me what a coma was. It made me very sad. I didn t speak for the next several hours while my parents were making several calls to contact my friend s parents. Charisse s voice trailed off again.

14 Did her parents come get her? I asked. Yeah. I rode with them all the way home. It took seven hours. That was the most silent trip I have ever taken. I held my friend s hand the entire time, hoping that she would come out of her coma. I could tell that, if I didn t probe, Charisse was going to end her story there as if to make the point that she knew a little bit about pain. I hope you are going to tell me that your friend did come out of the coma, I prompted. She did, but that is not the whole story. I felt so bad that she had flipped over the ridge while skiing with me that I went every day for eight months to the hospital. Finally, she woke up suddenly one day. You went every day for eight months? My voice sounded incredulous. Right. I would hold her hand or sing to her. Sometimes I would read to her. Eight months times thirty days. You sang and read to her for 240 days? I tried to sound more like I was giving her tribute rather than questioning her. Now that would be hard to do, Charisse smiled in amusement at my literal response to her comment. My parents told me to tell her jokes also. They had read in the newspaper that coma patients responded to jokes, so they wanted me to try that. I told her a few. I also talked to her about teachers, boys, friends, and activities at school. We had been on the volleyball team before the accident, so I told her about how the offseason was going. Did her family come see her like you did? I curiously inquired. She was an only child and her mother worked, but her mother and father did come after work every day. Her mother took off a few days from work during that time, but I guess they didn t see the need to be around her all the time since she was not responding. I motioned playfully, touching my thumb and four fingertips together repetitiously to signify that Charisse was giving me much more information than I was seeking. Stop, she laughingly said. I guess her brain tired of it after eight months and signaled her to wake up just so I wouldn t talk to her anymore. You were a really, really good friend to her, I said. I don t think her brain was screaming at you. I think it woke her up to thank you for your constant care.

15 That s a nice thing to say, she said. I learned the lesson of a lifetime through all that, though. What is that? I asked. I would have wanted someone to be there every day for me if I had fallen off a cliff. I guess a lot of people call it the Golden Rule. It s really just true friendship. Yeah, I replied. I was expecting something a whole lot more philosophical. I guess I thought that tragedies made people grow up to be wiser than everybody else. True friendship was not a lesson I would have learned, because, if someone had asked me what I had learned from my tragedy, I would have tried to appear as if I had become a philosopher and tried to say something wise. I knew what the Golden Rule stated, but I guess I thought that it was simplistic or that it only applied to a one-time affair. After the story she just told, however, I understood what it might take to do something for someone else over a period of time. My mind started going over the years since seventh grade. I could count on one hand the number of close friends that I had had. I don t know that any of them fit the category of true friend. I would like to think that a couple of them would have come every day to see me in the hospital if had ever ended up there. The reality was that my friends and I had never really shared any of the deep matters of life, and here was Charisse, whom I had not known very long, sharing her deep matters. That touched me. I also knew that she was being a friend to me, too, because she was trying to nudge me to tell her some of my deep thoughts. After all, she had come to sit by me because she had noticed that I was having a depressed moment. I guess it was true that I was in need of a true friend. My face saddened for a moment. My mind briefly wandered back to the point at which I found myself before Charisse walked up. That frozen frame re-entered my conscious awareness. I was kneeling, head bowed. My whole world had just been rocked Three long years ago, I felt that I had had to face my tragedy alone. I snapped out of that train of thought. If I did tell Charisse about the saddest time in my life, she would understand. I hadn t spoken to much of anyone about it in three years. I looked at her, my eyes inviting hers to engage in the gaze. True friendship, I said under my breath. Then to Charisse for her to hear, I said, I ve been looking for you for three years. Her eyes did engage mine. We sat next to each other under the school mascot. Time seemed suspended. I talked; she listened and prompted me whenever needed. For

16 the first time another person knew why I had knelt with my head bowed, why my lips had moved but no one had heard, and why my mind had felt an explosion inside it. The English word for what happened in those suspended moments in time is katharsis. I learned that word later in a college class. But what Charisse did for me that afternoon went way beyond what a word can capture. I was freed to move past a tragic event in my life. I just needed a nudge from one of those very few true friends that life brings to us when we are so absorbed in our tragedy that we don t know how to help ourselves.