Academic Writing

2.  One common way to assses a student”s ability to
interpret and infer the writer’s intentions and messages is
to ask him or her to identify, analyze, and interpret
theme.
 Project between the UC Irvine site and the Santa Ana
Unified school Discrit.
 The aim is to help the students develop the academi
literacy to succeed in school and to continue their
education in college

3. PROJECT
UCIWP AND
SAUSD RESULT
REPAIR
HOPE

4.  According to Tierney & Pearson (1983), researchers
have increasingly noted the connections between
reading and writing, identifying them as essentially
similiar processes of meaning construction.
 Experienced readers and writers purposefully select and
orchestrate cognitive strategies that are appropriate for
the literacy task at hand (Flower & Hayes, 1981).

5. Research suggest that teachers need to provide systematic and explicit instruction in
strategies used by mature readers and writers, such as :
1. tapping prior knowledge
2. asking question
3. Visualizing
4. forming interpretations
5. Monitoring
6. Revising
7. Meaning
8. Reflecting & Relating
Meltzer and Hamann (2005) pointed out that “research strongly indicates positive
correlations between adolescent literacy and frequent use of cognitive and
metacognitive strategies when reading and modeling text”

6. SCAFFOLDING STRATEGY INSTRUCTION ON
THEME
 The cognitive strategies focused on by each of the
lesson activities are noted in italics in the titles in
the following section.

7. 1. Teachers read the text about “The Horned Toad”
loud as students followed along
2. After the oral reading of the texts, students reread
the text silently, used the cognitive strategies
sentence starters to record their thoughtsand
feelings, and shared and discussed responses in
small groups.
3. Teachers provided a detailed explanation about
differention between a topic and a theme

8. The topic is simply what it’s about.
The theme is the author’s point
about a topic.
A theme statement must be a
complete sentence (with a least a
subject and a verb)

9. 4. Students were then asked to reread the text and note
any topic words that they felt captured the big ideas of
the story.
5. Collaborating with a partner, students selected three
topic words that they felt were most relevant to the text
and developed three theme statements.
6. The teachers then asked for volunteers and recorded
the sample theme statements alongside the topic word.

10. 6. Students filled out a chart focussed on what the
characters do, what the characters say, and what the
characters think and feel at the beginning, middle and
end of the story.
7. We taught students to add a “because” to these kinds
of statements and to give a reason.
8. Students analyzed students essay on “The Horned
Toad” to explore how to construct an effective essay
with a well-articulated theme statement.

11. - Students are given a pretest and posttest in
analyzing a reading theme
- Students are led to write in sentences analytical
essay on a theme that has been given

12.  Creating a do / what chart (analyzing authors craft
and visualizing)
 Assessing and color-coding student essays
(evaluating, visualizing, and analyzing author’s
craft)
We presented students with a prompt on “ the Horned Toad” ,
“The Scarlet Iblis” and The medicine Bag”
Demonstrated how to underline verb and describe “do” and
“what”
Think that the point of writing a literary response-base essay is to
prove that they understood what they read by retelling the story.

13.  Color-coding students own essays and revising
essays (revising meaning).
Working with a partner, students color-coded their own present
and revised them into a multiple-draft essay as practice for the
posttest.

14. - helped students in analyzing a reading theme
- Increase the ability of students in essay writing in
sentences analytically