1. What is a rubric? What is its purpose? Do rubrics help students? If so, how? If not, explain your reasoning.

2. Are rubrics valuable? Explain your reasoning. What does it mean to synthesize? How do you synthesize when you’re reading or writing?

3. Review your rubric from last week How did the rubric impact your discussion? What did you do well? What could you do better today?

4. *Describe a meaningful experiences you have had with literacy and explain why they are important; provide specific examples and details. *Compare and contrast your experiences with one of the authors we have read from An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship and provide a quotation from that text in support of your commentary. *How do you feel about reading overall? How do you feel about writing?

5. Students must make a claim claim—what does it mean to be American based on Crevecoeur and Akst texts. Students must cite evidence from BOTH texts You take what both authors say and make a bigger statement— SYNTHESIS!!!

6. Citing Textual Evidence –A? –B? –C? –D/F? –What does each look like—in words! Your Categories: Strength of Claim Explanation of Evidence Structure and Style Grammar and Punctuation Overall Effort and Focus

7. 1. In An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship, Greg Sarris writes, “I was never a natural reader, if there is such a thing. As a kid, I didn’t go to the libraries. I didn’t read late into the night, hiding under the covers with a flashlight devouring adventure stories, comics, or Boy Scout manuals…I can’t think of anything I read until my freshmen year in high school when I was forced to read The Old Man and the Sea in my remedial English class. I felt sorry for the fish” (p. 47). 2. In the same volume, Jimmy Santiago Baca writes, “Through language I was free. I could respond, escape, indulge; embrace or reject earth or the cosmos. I was launched on an endless journey without boundaries or rules, in which I could salvage the floating fragments of my past, or be born anew in the spontaneous ignition of understanding some heretofore concealed aspect of myself” (p. 53).

8. SILENT WRITING TIME: Create your claim. Look over all of the evidence that you have collected and create a statement that represents what it means to be American based on BOTH texts.