Course Rationale

Integrated Reading and Writing Strategies is designed to prepare students to deal successfully with college-level reading. Students who scored below the cut-off on the reading assessment must enroll and participate in a developmental reading course until they satisfy the TSI requirement.  Students who do not comply with the TSI requirements may have a hold put on their transcripts and be required to see a counselor to register for classes.   

While the firm expectation for all courses is that student work will reflect authentic (student-generated) effort and original critical thinking, individual professors will enforce their own policies on the use and documentation of generative AI technology. Where generative AI technology is allowed, its use must be documented.

Assignment Information

Weekly Assignments & Quizzes

Each week, you can earn up to 30 points. Weekly work includes in-class and out-of-class work, quizzes, reflective journaling, readings, and annotations. These assignments provide a chance for you to practice the reading and writing skills that we are focusing on in class. These weekly assignments are essential to your growth in the class and thus worth a large portion of your final grade. Arriving prepared to class is essential to make the most of your time in the course. Points will only be provided for work turned in before class. If you are missing class, you will still be required to complete weekly work provided on Blackboard unless we have made arrangements beforehand.

Major Projects & Portfolio

Over the course of this semester, you will have the chance to write a number of assignments that will fulfill the learning goals. You will also revise these papers significantly, using feedback from me and your peers. At the end of the semester, you will compile and submit a portfolio which will include a selection of revised shorter assignments, your revised major unit paper, and a cover letter explaining how your assignments demonstrates the course learning goals.

Required Texts

• Students will be required to have a weekly planner. We will discuss options in class.

• There are no textbooks associated with this course. Reading materials will be provided in Blackboard. 

Suggested Materials

• Flash Drive or Google Drive

• Spiral notebook for notes

• Highlighters, pens, and/or pencils

Course Description and Instructional Methodology: INRW 0340

Integrated Reading and Writing Objectives

Student will:

• Locate the main ideas and supporting details in written text including the student's own work.
• Through inferencing, and deductive/inductive reasoning:
  • Build vocabulary and determine the meanings of words and phrases,
  • Analyze the relationship among ideas in written material to draw conclusions, and
  • Use these critical thinking skills to evaluate written materials.
• Identify and define a writer’s audience, purpose, point of view, tone, and intended meaning.
• Annotating college-level texts and textbooks through the use of note-taking strategies and summarization.
• Apply study skills to written assignments.
• Demonstrate cohesive sentence structure void of fragments, run-ons, and comma splices.
• Explore the validity of sources needed for documentation.

Integrated Reading and Writing Student Learning Outcomes

After completing this course, students will:

• Analyze the impact of reading and writing independently and using critical thinking, problem-solving approaches in college-level materials to learn, study, and communicate with diverse opinions and values in a free society to support life-long learning.
• Select and monitor the effectiveness of reading strategies, including vocabulary building techniques, appropriate to purpose and text.
• Select and monitor the effectiveness of writing strategies including a recursive vs. linear writing process, editing skills, transitions, thesis development, and paragraph development/ cohesion. 
• Select and demonstrate various study skills and methods to meet the reading and writing demands of college courses.

• Demonstrate ability to use reading and writing skills to participate in academic debate on issues of importance to the society and the world at large.
• Write a well-organized, cohesive essay including a developed introduction paragraph, multiple body paragraphs beginning with topic sentences and support, and a conclusion.  
• Demonstrate academic ability to respond to types of assessments including graded assignments, compiling a portfolio, composing a short answer response for an in-class assessment, crafting a book review, analyzing primary and secondary sources, test preparation, and formal exams.

Discipline Specific Outcomes:

After completing this course, students will:

• Demonstrate ability to read a variety of texts from essays, articles, academic research papers, and college textbook chapters.
  • Perform a close reading of texts for annotative and interpretive purposes
    • Use inferencing skills to bring tacit ideas into explicit knowledge or ideas about textual meanings.
    • Close readings and annotations may include: major topics, important main ideas, supporting details that support the topic of the essay, strong lines and weak lines, and vocabulary building.
• Compose a variety of texts that exhibit characteristics of various writing patterns and purposes
  • expressive, compare contrast, persuasive, argumentative, referential, literary, narration, evaluation, etc.  
• Demonstrate the writing process as a tool to improve as a writer. 
• Reflect on self-performance through writing.
• Condense results of annotation to a summary.
• Compose a well-organized essay including the following:
  • Introduction (hook, lead-in/ background information, thesis)
  • Body Paragraphs (topic sentence, support sentences, concluding sentence)
  • Conclusion (summary, call to action, lasting impression, tie up loose ends, etc.)
• Apply study skills to simulate exams and assignments in introductory college courses to prepare for future course success:
  • Recognize appropriate study skills based on task objective(s).  
  • Identify the basic steps of the study skills needed for the task objective(s).     
  • Demonstrate time management for the study based skills prior to the task’s due date.        
  • Demonstrate decision-making ability under similar pressure to the experience during the task objective(s).   
  • Create moments of collaborative learning with classmates as a platform for a student-led opportunity.