D696 Foundations of Literacy Through Literature, catalog number EDUC 5087, is the two-CU graduate literature course in the WGU Master of Arts in Teaching sequence. It covers using age-appropriate literature within the science of reading, the same material as the undergraduate D688 (EDUC 2257). The graduate scale is the collection rather than the single title. Which books are in the room, and which are read aloud across a year, is a curricular decision with more effect than any one lesson.
What EDUC 5087 expects at collection level
A classroom collection teaches whether or not anyone plans it. If every book on the shelf is contemporary realistic fiction, children learn that stories are about people like them now. If the informational books are all about animals, children learn that facts live in nature and nowhere else. A graduate submission is expected to see a collection as a curriculum and to be able to describe what a given one is teaching.
The analysis is doable and concrete. Count by genre and see what is missing. Look at the range of complexity and ask what a child at each end of the class would find. Ask who the protagonists are across the collection and whose lives are represented as ordinary rather than as lessons. Check how much poetry there is, since it is usually the first thing absent and the form that most rewards rereading.
The read-aloud sequence across a year is the second graduate object. A year of read-alouds can be planned as a progression: increasing length and structural complexity, deliberate variety of narrator and form, and deliberate connections to what children are studying elsewhere. Compared with choosing each book the week before, a planned sequence produces a measurable difference in the language children have met by June.
Text complexity at graduate level means being able to talk about it in more than one dimension. Quantitative measures index sentence and word difficulty; qualitative analysis covers knowledge demands, structure, language conventionality and levels of meaning; and the reader and task dimension covers who is reading it and what for. A book can be simple by measure and demanding in every other respect, and being able to say that precisely is the skill under test.
Professional judgment about challenged material belongs in this course too. Teachers are sometimes asked to justify a book, and the professional response is a documented rationale: the instructional purpose, the standards it serves, the awards or reviews it holds, and the alternative available to a family who objects. Writing one rationale properly is a useful thing to have done before you need it.
The last expectation is that literature is connected back to the reading model. Literature is not an alternative to structured literacy; it is where the language comprehension strand is built while the word recognition strand is being taught separately. A graduate submission that says so explicitly is placing the course correctly inside the programme.
Access is the practical dimension that turns a collection from a display into a curriculum. Books that children cannot reach, cannot choose from, or cannot read independently do not function, whatever the analysis says about them. That means thinking about how the collection is organised so a child can find something, how many titles are available at the range of levels a real class contains, whether audio versions exist for children whose comprehension outruns their decoding, and how books move between school and home. A graduate submission that spends three sentences on access has answered a question that most collection analyses leave entirely to chance.
Turning the rubric into a collection-level document
Your scored aspects are in the Course of Study, not the public catalog. Count them before drafting. Each is judged alone against a three-point scale and each needs a 2, and evaluative aspects need stated criteria to score at all.
If D696 uses a performance assessment, write to the aspect list and use its nouns. Where an aspect asks for selection with justification, state the criterion, then the selection, then the reasoning that connects them, so an evaluator can follow the decision rather than reconstruct it.
A worked word budget. Suppose four scored aspects and directions pointing at roughly 1,500 words. Allow 110 words for context naming the grade and the purpose of the collection or sequence, and 80 for a close. That leaves 1,310 across four aspects, or about 327 words each.
Then weight. The selection and justification aspect deserves 420, since it carries the submission. The complexity analysis aspect deserves 360, because multi-dimensional analysis takes room. Descriptive aspects can hold at 265. In a two-CU course, plot summaries are the first thing to cut; an evaluator needs to know what a book affords, not what happens in it.
A shape that fits a graduate literature submission
Use the directions' sections where they exist. Where they do not, this order keeps the collection-level argument visible.
| Layer | What it establishes | Where it thins out |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | What this collection or sequence is for, in learning terms | A general commitment to a love of reading |
| Selection criteria | The stated tests a title must pass to be included | Criteria implied by the choices rather than declared |
| Genre and form range | The spread across narrative, informational, poetry and others | A collection that is almost entirely one genre |
| Complexity spread | Analysis across quantitative, qualitative and reader dimensions | A single measure quoted for each title |
| Representation analysis | Who appears, in what roles, and what the pattern teaches | A list of titles offered as evidence of range |
| Read-aloud sequence | The order across the year and what it builds | Titles listed with no order or reason |
| Rationale document | A written justification for at least one title | Absent, leaving nothing to point at if a book is questioned |
Write the rationale for the title most likely to be questioned rather than the safest one. It is the more useful document and the one that demonstrates professional judgment to an evaluator.
Evidence craft when your evidence is a collection
Book-level claims and collection-level claims need different support, and graduate readers expect both.
- Cite every title fully, with author, illustrator where relevant, and year.
- Report complexity measures with the system named, and say where the measure and your judgment disagree.
- Cite research on read-aloud, on literature discussion and on access to books, rather than asserting their benefits.
- Where you make representation claims, describe what a book does specifically rather than categorising it.
- Use reviews and awards as evidence in a rationale, cited properly.
- APA throughout, including any published booklist or curriculum you drew titles from.
Name the gap you could not fill. Every collection has one, whether budget, availability or a genre you know least well, and stating it with a plan reads as an audit rather than as an omission. Saying how you would fill it matters as much as naming it, since library borrowing, class sets shared between colleagues and digital collections all close gaps that a purchase order cannot, and a plan that names a route is more credible than one that names a wish.
What separates Competent from a returned submission
Aspects score independently, so returns here usually name selection criteria that were never declared or a complexity analysis that reported one number.
- Selection criteria appear before the titles they justify.
- Complexity is analysed in more than one dimension for each key title.
- The collection covers more than one genre in a stated proportion.
- The read-aloud sequence has an order with a reason.
- At least one written rationale exists and cites external support.
Work is recorded as Competent or Not Competent at WGU, with no letter grades, and performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty. A return costs calendar inside a six-month flat-rate term, and each course closed in the term lowers your effective cost per course.
The boundaries hold: proctored objective assessments are for preparation only and never for us to sit, credentials are never requested, and any classroom-based component of a course remains yours.
Five mistakes that weaken a D696 submission
- Summarising plots. An evaluator needs what a book affords instructionally, not what happens in it.
- Reporting one complexity measure. Quantitative levels miss most of what makes elementary literature demanding.
- Building a single-genre collection. Poetry and informational text are the usual absences and the ones most easily noticed.
- Listing titles as a sequence. An order without a reason is a list, and the sequencing aspect has nothing to score.
- Skipping the rationale. A written justification is a professional document and this is the natural place to learn to write one.
How support works on D696
Send the rubric and task directions with your grade and the purpose the collection or sequence serves. The draft comes back aspect-mapped, with declared selection criteria, complexity analysed in more than one dimension, a genre spread stated in proportions, a sequenced read-aloud plan and a full written rationale for the title most likely to be questioned.
If your Degree Plan carries the undergraduate code, build from D688. This course also complements D675, since the collection you design here supplies the texts a knowledge-building sequence needs.
Three questions MAT candidates ask about D696
Is D696 the same course as EDUC 5087?
Is D696 the graduate version of D688?
What belongs in a rationale for a book?
Building a defensible collection for D696?
Send the rubric and task directions together with your grade level. You get an aspect-mapped draft with declared criteria, multi-dimensional complexity analysis and a full written rationale.
Where D696 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 2 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.