1. AvoidingEye
Trauma:
Incorporating Reading
and Writing Without
Grading So Much Your
Eyes Bleed
As you come in,
please jot down
what concerns
you most about
incorporating
writing into
your subject
area.

2. There’s No Need for Bleeding Eyes...
Learning Targets:
★ READING: Three quick (and painless) ways to get
your students to engage and understand assigned
reading.
★ WRITING: Easy, adaptable strategies to get students
writing regularly in class in any subject area.

3. Assignment: Read this passage and make note
of what is important. (You have a copy of this on your green handout.)
“Given the impact of language, strategies, background,
purpose, and assimilation and accommodation on discourse
processing, the notion of reading and writing as
monolithic abilities becomes untenable. All acts of
literacy are not equal. Reading and writing do not consist
of a set of subskills that can be easily isolated, practiced,
mastered, and then used with the same degree of proficiency
or facility from one text to the next. Rather, language
performance changes as the relevant factors impinging on
the literary process change. As conditions and contexts
vary, so too will the process and the product of the literacy
event” (Kucer 132).

4. Questions:
★ How did you
know what was
important?
★ Can you recall
what you read
to the point that
you could
explain it?

5. Three Things:
1. PURPOSE: Always tell your
students what they need to
look for and why they are
reading the text.
2. BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE:
Before assigning a text, make
sure the appropriate
background knowledge is in
place.
3. VOCABULARY: Preview the text
and anticipate vocabulary that
might prohibit your students
from fully understanding the
text.
Remember these three things
when incorporating reading into
your instruction.

6. Setting a Purpose
Before you assign the reading, ask yourself
these things:
★ Why are my students reading this?
★ What understanding should they have
when they are done?
★ What do I think is an important focus for
my students?
★ What do they need to know to be
successful on the test, essay, lab, etc.?
When you assign the reading, tell your students
some or all of these things:
★ You are reading this because ______.
★ You should understand ______ when you
are done.
★ Please focus on _________________.
★ You need to know ________ for the test,
essay, lab, etc.

7. Understanding Background Knowledge and
the Brain
★ Our brains take new information and sort, discard, and/or add it to our existing
information.
○ If we have no previous understanding, our brains will sort and discard the information.
○ If we have some understanding, our brains will have a way to link the new information to
existing information. This will either add to the existing information or modify the existing
information to allow for new ideas.

8. Background Knowledge- How sweet it is...
★ Content: What concepts do my students need to know to understand this?
★ Text-structure: Do my students know how to read this text?
○ Do they know how to read the charts/graphs/maps?
○ Do they understand the headings and subheadings?
○ Do they understand the purpose of a sidebar, endnotes, or captions?
★ Other: What else do they need to know to remember this information?

9. Vocabulary
Consider these things about your
text before assigning the reading:
1. What words do they need to
know in order to comprehend
this text?
2. Keep the list small.
3. How will I help my students with
the vocabulary?
It’s not just the bolded words in
the back.

10. Now try this:
Read the passage on page 130 of Dimensions of Literacy that has been boxed.
Consider these things:
PURPOSE: To understand the relationship of background knowledge and
construction of meaning.
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE: Think about the information I shared regarding how our
brains adapt to new information.
VOCABULARY: Anticipated vocabulary words have been identified and are defined
in the margins.

11. Resources:
★ The blue packet has the following
things for your use:
○ Activities for building background
knowledge, pre-reading strategies,
and vocabulary instruction.
○ Academic key words used on ISTEP
in math, language arts, and science.
○ A reading strategies help chart for
struggling readers.
○ If you have other questions, let me
know!

12. Once upon a time,
there was a ______
teacher who needed
his/her students to
write more.

13. But I suck at grammar!
Relax! Your job is content. Most grammar
issues
can be largely ignored.
“Grammar” to focus on:
➔Subject-specific things like citations, equations, terminology.
➔Structures that impede meaning.

14. Thegradingwill
killme!
I get this one. Really.
● Focus on short written
pieces.
● Focus on meaning rather
than grammar.
● Grade short pieces often
rather than in collections.
● Develop a system.

15. Writing doesn’t work in my subject.
Some subjects are easier to work writing into than others. Keep these things in mind:
● Use your language. Writing isn’t always sentences and paragraphs.
● Be consistent. Sometimes students resist writing in certain subjects. Persistence is key.
● Think outside the essay. Students don’t have to write essays to be writing. They can write plays,
stories, poetry, letters, abstracts, lists, instructions or directions, and dozens of other options.

16. Resources:
The purple packet contains a
variety of quick writing
activities with suggestions for
some of the content areas.
This is by no means an
exhaustive list. It’s just
something to get you started!

17. Questions?

18. You are welcome to stay here
as long as you like to ask
questions, reflect on what
you’ve learned, or sketch out
some ideas.