1. Grade 12 Expository Reading and Writing(ERWC) Essential Outcomes
What’s Next? Thinking About Life After High School

2. What is ERWC?
The ERWC (Expository Reading and Writing Course) is a college preparatory, rhetoric-based English language arts course for grade 12 designed to develop academic literacy (advanced proficiency in rhetorical and analytical reading, writing, and thinking). The ERWC also offers curriculum for grades 7-11, with four extended modules per grade level.

3. What does it mean to read rhetorically?
Today we use the term to refer to all the techniques a writer or speaker might use to influence readers or listeners and modify their understanding of a subject.

4. Performance Tasks
To generate a portfolio that documents their research and findings about potential paths after high school • To write a final personal application letter for college or a letter of introduction to a work community

5. Module Objectives In addition to the focus on Common Core State Standards, the module targets the skill areas listed below. Students will be able to:
• Become familiar with college and career expectations for reading independently • Become familiar with the intellectual habits necessary for success in college and careers, including curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, flexibility, responsibility, and metacognition • Organize information from online research and textual study for use in developing writing

6. Essential Outcomes
• Generate questions about ideas, arguments, analyses, perspectives, or the rhetorical presentation of text for the purpose of making an informed response to what others say • Apply the rhetorical framework to reading and writing situations • Manage information gathered through reading in preparation for writing • Develop academic vocabulary through reading and writing • Understand writing as a situated process of decision-making grounded in rhetorical contexts • Understand writing as a response to an audience, situation, or intention • Apply writing as the development of thought rather than the representation or ornamentation of thought • Write prose that is coherent, clear, and organized • Write sentences that demonstrate variety

7. Skills Addressed Making Predictions and Asking Questions
Understanding Key Vocabulary
Surveying the Text
Writing in a Dialectical Journal
Synthesizing, Summarizing and Responding
Summarizing Research Findings
Several AVID Strategies are used: Marking the Text, Writing IN The MarGIns, Rhetorical Precis, Identifying Key Vocabulary

8. ERWC: Key Principles
Key Principles of an Effective Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum
The integration of interactive reading and writing processes;
A rhetorical approach to texts that fosters critical thinking and engagement through a relentless focus on the text;
Materials and themes that engage student interest;
Classroom activities designed to model and foster successful practices of fluent readers and writers;
Research-based methodologies with a consistent relationship between theory and practice;
Built-in flexibility to allow teachers to respond to varied students' needs and instructional contexts; and
Alignment with the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy