Step 4 – Joint Construction

After working on this step, learners will be able to 

1. identify the process used to create a biographical profile, and 
2. collaboratively create a text of the same genre through phases¹

Before Class

What to do. Assign JI Handout Step 4. Prompt for learners

JI Handout 4. Prompt for learners

• Watch the Documentary “Dolores” https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/dolores-huerta/
• Create at least 10 bullet points with information about the life of Dolores Huerta

In class

What to do.

1. First, set the context for the text you’ll be creating by choosing where this text could be published. For instance, tell your learners that, as a group, you will be creating a biographical profile of Dolores Huerta to be published in The New York Times.²
2. Then, using guiding questions, work collaboratively with learners to create an outline following the biographical profile genre stages (Orientation, Life Events, etc., see Step 5, page X). Sample guiding question:
   1. Let’s use the genre stages we identified in the Jovita Idár piece to create an outline for Huerta’s profile. We can make changes later if we decide that we want different stages for this profile.
   2. The Dolores Huerta Biographical Profile Outline might look like this:
      • Orientation
      • Life Events
        • Event 1
        • Event 2 
        • etc.
      • Reorientation/Closing

3. Once the stages are identified, collaboratively develop the content for the Orientation and for a couple of Life Events. Here you should call attention to linguistic choices to create specific effects like apposition, time sequences, and reporting speech the features studied in the Idár text. Sample guiding questions:
   1. In the Orientation we want to introduce Dolores Huerta by highlighting her key contribution to society. What information can we include? Should we use apposition to incorporate information? Do we want to show her “in action” as the Jovita Idár text does?
   2. Which Life Events would you select if you had only room for three? How would you organize them? How would you use time markers to create a sequence of Life Events?
   3. Would you include a Re-Orientation to close the text? Yes/No, why? If yes, what would you include?
   4. We saw that one economical and effective way for adding information on people, places, etc. is the use of apposition. Can we find places in our text where it makes sense to economize and use apposition? 
   5. Do we want to give our text more authority by quoting from the movie you watched using reported speech?
   6. Does it make sense to move things around? For instance, switch the order of some of the Life Events? Or, are we happy with our text?

Self-Assessment for Step 4, Joint Construction. 

What to do. Assign JI Handout Step 4. Prompt for learners. While you can assign this self-assessment as homework, it is more meaningful to ask learners to completed it right after you finish Step 4: in class, and without consulting their  documents. While learners will be using their notes during Step 5, not consulting them during the self-assessment will indicate how much they can do without any type of assistance. 

JI Handout Step 4. Prompt for learners. 
Complete the self-assessment table below. 

1. For each goal, 
   1. circle the statement that better describes your abilities, and 
   2. complete the sentences in the cell by recalling information or listing what you did or did not do during the creation of Huerta’s biographical profile. 
2. Enter any thoughts you want to share with the instructor.

Goals	Fully confident	Partially confident	Not confident at all	Notes for the Instructor
Identify the process used to create a biographical profile.	I am able to identify the process used to create a biographical profile. This process entails:	I am able to identify some of the phases of the process used to create a biographical profile. These phases are:	I am unable to identify the process used to create a biographical profile because:
Collaborate in the creation of a biographical profile	I fully collaborated to create Huerta’s biographical profile by:	I partially collaborated to create Huerta’s biographical profile by:	I did not collaborate in the creation of Huerta’s biographical profile because:

1. If you use several text-based tasks in a course, you might not need to conduct a joint construction for each of them. Once your learners understand how to use Steps 1 through 3 in the process of creating their own text, you can skip Step 4. ↩︎
2. Deciding on context of publication is key to identify the level of formality of the text. We recommend using the same target context as in the model text.  ↩︎