A Look at Reading and Writing Assignments

Daily we are going to be asking our students to complete tasks that align with objectives that they need to complete to pass the class, and eventually, to graduate. One such assignment will include reading and writing. We need to understand what key points will be needed in such an assignment to get our students engaged and learning. There are three major components to creating a reading and writing assignment: reading rhetorically, connecting to reading to write, and writing rhetorically. Each component must be understood individually for them to work together.

Reading rhetorically means to not just focus on what the texts is saying but to also look at the purpose and intentions of the author, and to look at the effect the reading has on the audience. Reading rhetorically has three subsections that must also be understood: (1) pre-reading, (2) reading, and (3) post-reading. Pre-reading builds up to what the students should be looking for while reading. This is where the teacher helps the students look deeper at what the audience may be, how to connect to their own lives, and understand a purpose for reading. Once the students move into the reading section, they will use their knowledge that they obtained for the pre-reading exercises to help “understand the text and to confirm, refine, or refute the predictions” (7) they had made before reading the text. Helping the students to focus their thoughts before reading will help them understand their thoughts after reading. Finally, post-reading is understanding what they have read and processing it in the bigger scheme. The bigger scheme is what is the purpose of the reading the text, understanding what the student got out of reading the text, and creating an argument or idea to help them create a topic for their writing assignment.

Post-reading often goes hand in hand with connecting to reading to writing. In connecting to reading to writing the student must have an idea of what the text is arguing or stating. From there the students can generate ideas on what they would like to argue in their paper, and the students must learn how to connect their ideas back to the text they read. In this step student will have to learn how to transition their thoughts, ideas, and information into an argument or central idea to write for a specific audience.

When transitioning into writing rhetorically students must consider: “audience, purpose, ethos, situation, message, and genre” (19). Once they have considered these things, students will be able to organize what they want to argue and what they may still need to do this. This is where the students really start to organize their thoughts and information into a paper. The students will be asked to enter the conversation that is already started in the reading that they have already completed and build upon it. The first draft or two will be the students getting their thoughts out. They are intended to be rough. Once they start really revising and organizing their thoughts and see their order of importance the students will start putting it into a well formulated essay.

What we must remember all through these processes is that students need guidance and help organizing what they are learning. Once they get the entire process down they will need less and less help. This process will help the students when they read later in life to understand what they are reading and what the purposes of them are, and it will help students to have well rounded arguments when talking to people about their readings.