The following resources have been developed by the English/Language Arts College & Career Readiness Initiative members to be used in teacher education classes.  These online lessons integrate the College & Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) and the Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills (TEKS).  The instruction focuses on reading, writing, research, and instructional strategies for secondary teacher education candidates.

Note:  The author's contact information is included with the lessons.  If you have any questions about the lessons please feel free to contact them.

Lesson:  Integrating the College & Career Readiness Standards:  Reading & Responding to Student Texts
Purpose of lesson: To model strategies for reading and responding to high school students’ writing so teacher candidates can both learn how to do this themselves and teach their students to be better readers of their peers’ writing while providing productive peer feedback.

Lesson:  Integrating the College & Career Readiness Standards:  Productive Peer Response (2-Day Lesson)
Purpose of lesson: To lead teacher candidates in a discussion about the benefits and challenges of engaging students in productive peer response, including the importance of giving students a specific framework for analyzing and responding to one another’s writing and modeling good feedback through whole class workshops.

Lesson:  Integrating the College & Career Readiness Standards:  Making Rhetorical Choices—Purpose, Audience, & Genre
Purpose of lesson: To help teacher candidates understand how to develop several potential projects (with different purposes, audiences, and genres) from one set of research. 

Lesson: Integrating the College & Career Readiness Standards:  Revising Texts for Multiple Audiences and/or Genres
Purpose of lesson: To help teacher candidates see how texts change when they are revised for different audiences and/or rewritten using different genres.

For questions about the above lessons, please contact Dr. Jonikka Charlton, The University of Texas-Pan American ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Lesson:  Toulmin Analysis and Super Bowl Commercials
Purpose of lesson: To help teacher candidates recognize persuasive strategies identified as claim, data, and warrant, using the Toulmin Model and to analyze the visual/aural text using the strategies.  These strategies can be used as scaffolding for analysis of persuasive texts.

Lesson:  The Believing and Doubting Game
Purpose of lesson: To help teacher candidates engage in the believing and doubting game to analyze a persuasive text, to think critically about the claims and supports presented by the text, and to improve interpretation and evaluative reading.

Lesson:  Prose Modeling and The Way to Rainy Mountain
Purpose of lesson: To help teacher candidates adapt their purpose, style, and organization strategies in response to unfamiliar and challenging tasks by using prose modeling.

Lesson: Research:  From Topic to Question to Problem
Purpose of lesson: To help teacher candidates formulate a complex research topic that will provide a foundation for conducting in-depth research by modeling the Topic-Question-Problem sequence.

For questions about the above lessons, please contact Dr. Mark Noe, The University of Texas-Pan American ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Lesson:  Integrating the College & Career Readiness Standards:  Comprehending Point of View in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”
Purpose of lesson:  To model techniques used in various kinds of persuasive writing (reviews, editorials, opinion pieces), particularly the use of detail and point of view, and to encourage students to use similar or other rhetorical techniques in their own letter and essay writing.

Lesson:  Integrating the College and Career Readiness Standards: Analyzing Rhetorical Techniques in Prose to Write Effective Summaries
Purpose of lesson:  To model the rhetorical techniques of summarizing and condensing information in order to help students use similar rhetorical techniques in their essays.

Lesson: Integrating the College and Career Readiness Standards: Analyzing Visual Document Designs in Informational Text
Purpose of lesson:  To determine whether graphic information presented in a source is coherent and effective.

For questions about the above lessons, please contact Dr. Rich Rice, Texas Tech University ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Lesson:  Integrating the College and Career Readiness Standards: Managing Work with Technology
Purpose of lesson:  To introduce a technology management and organization system to teacher candidates.

Lesson: Integrating the College and Career Readiness Standards: Teaching Summarization as a Reading Comprehension Strategy.
Purpose of lesson: To model a reading comprehension strategy, “Sum-it-Up,” so teacher candidates can incorporate strategy instruction in their work to help students meet college and career readiness standards.

For questions about the above lessons, please contact Dr. Barbara Morganfield, Southern Methodist University ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )