Unit 7:

Phases 4 and 5 -
Re-reading the Text to Produce New Discourses


**Rather than exercises that force broader kinds of systematic language production, teachers at Grade 4 level will probably need to design a review variant of earlier exercises to foster automaticity and naturalness of age-appropriate language behaviors, since students will not be able to stretch their cognitive and linguistic knowledge past a certain point -- these students need practice at automaticity and reframing, not necesarily new knowledge.


1) Design at least one set of short-production exercise to be done as a subsequent homework assignment -- a set of asignments (with their projected position in the curriculum) that move students from their systematic comprehension of the text into various kinds of age-appropriate language production. Make sure that these exercises build on the pattern of comprehension used in the comprehension exercise set in the previous phase. A "set" of exercises most likely consists of:

-a sentence-based grammar exercise, reviewing how the information comprehended is expressed in sentence form
-an oral-aural exercise building on this information and sentence structure

-an informal written exercise, usually asking for connected paragraph-length writing, developing out of the information and sentence structure practiced orally.

For students at higher grade levels, add:

-a formal oral exercise (changing register to focus on language acts that are socially more complex, as well as age-appropriate; e.g., a formal debate position, or a coherent explanation of a task or problem, where younger students simply discussed points of view more randomly)
-a formal writing exercise of paragraph length (e.g., a letter to a person of respect).


2) For students at upper grade levels, add:

-a long-genre aural-oral exercise (e.g. a full formal oral presentation, on the basis of which other students take notes)

-a long-genre written exercise in an informal genre (e.g., writing a script, a dialogue, a story, of a page or more in length)

-a long-genre written exercise in a formal or socially complex genre (e.g., an essay, a formal letter, a petition designed to persuade, or a comparison of the chosen text with another source -- an exercise of a page or more in length).


3) Comment on how the short-production exercise sequence you designed meet Standard(s), in terms of the curricular goals you set in the final exercise for Unit 3.


4) Follow-up: assume that the students will be returning to this text at their next level of study. Design a set of reading exercises for the next level, and describe how they fill the same Standard(s) as the other level, or a different set more appropriate for that succeeding level.


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