D838 Teaching Adolescent Literature in Secondary Schools, catalog number EDUC 6067, is the two-CU English methods course built around the literature adolescents actually read and how to teach it. The scored skill that surprises candidates is text selection. Choosing a book is a professional judgment with criteria behind it: reading demand, the readers in the room, the standard being taught, and defensibility if a parent objects. A plan that opens with a beloved novel and works backwards to a standard is the plan that comes back.
Selection, response and the reader in the room
Three strands run through this course. The first is matching text to reader. Complexity is not one number: quantitative measures capture sentence and word difficulty while missing irony, unreliable narration, nonlinear structure and cultural knowledge assumed of the reader. A short novel written in plain sentences can be far harder than a long one, and a submission that justifies a choice by a readability figure alone has not met the aspect asking for reader and task considerations.
The second is what students do with a text. Adolescent literature instruction lives between two failures. On one side, a book becomes a comprehension quiz and the reading experience disappears. On the other, discussion becomes free association and no standard is ever taught. Strong plans hold both: a genuine response element where readers bring their own experience, and a disciplined analytical element where claims about the text are supported from the text.
The third is professional defensibility. Books written for adolescents deal with difficult material, and teachers who use them need a rationale on file: why this book, for these students, aligned to which standard, with what alternative available to a family who objects. Where a rubric aspect mentions rationale, selection policy or community considerations, that is what it wants, and one paragraph of specifics answers it.
Turning scored aspects into a unit or lesson plan
The scoring detail sits in your Course of Study. Read it before choosing a text, because the aspects usually determine what the text has to be able to do. A rubric that scores teaching figurative language needs a book with language worth examining; a rubric that scores perspective-taking needs one with a narrator worth arguing about.
Every aspect is scored alone and needs a 2, so the plan cannot lean on the strength of your book choice. Even the best selection has to be justified, taught and assessed in separate scored sections.
The word budget, worked. Assume five scored aspects and directions asking for roughly 1,700 words. Reserve 130 words for the class context and 100 for a close. That leaves about 1,470, or 295 an aspect. Now shift: the text rationale aspect and the assessment aspect deserve an extra 70 each, taken 35 at a time from the descriptive sections. Rationale is the aspect most often written as enthusiasm rather than as criteria, and assessment is the one most often written as a quiz.
Budget reading time separately from writing time. If your task requires a text you have not read, the calendar cost is days, and a two-CU course can quietly become the reason a term ends short.
A structure that fits a literature unit plan
Where the task directions supply a template, follow it exactly. Where they do not, this arrangement covers the scored ground in the order an evaluator reads.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Readers and context | Grade, reading range in the class, language backgrounds, prior units | Everything downstream is judged against this description |
| Text and rationale | The work chosen, with complexity, reader match and standard alignment argued | Scored for criteria; admiration is not a rationale |
| Standard and objectives | The standard quoted, with objectives at the same level | Scored for alignment between verb and task |
| Instructional sequence | Before, during and after reading, with what students produce at each stage | Scored for structure; a reading schedule is not a sequence |
| Response and discussion | How personal response is invited and how claims get evidence | Scored for holding both, not choosing one |
| Supports | Adjustments for developing readers, multilingual learners and advanced readers | Scored for specificity to this text's demands |
| Assessment | Formative reading checks and a summative task with criteria | Scored for measuring interpretation rather than plot recall |
| Sensitive content plan | Difficult material named, with an alternative and a communication approach | Scored where selection policy or professional judgment appears |
Quote the text at least once in the plan. A specific passage with a specific question attached demonstrates more instructional thinking than three paragraphs about themes.
Evidence craft when the evidence is a novel
Literature methods writing draws on the text itself, on measures of complexity and on professional literature about adolescent readers.
- Cite the text properly, with edition and page numbers where you quote. In a methods document the citation also tells an evaluator which version students would hold.
- Use more than one measure of complexity. Report a quantitative figure if you have one, then discuss structure, language demand and knowledge demands in prose.
- Attribute instructional approaches. Reader response, close reading routines and literature circles all have literature behind them, and naming it converts a technique into a defensible choice.
- Anchor claims about adolescent readers in something published rather than in general belief about teenagers.
- Keep student information out of the document. Describe readers by need and level, never by name.
- Where you mention a challenge or objection procedure, cite the policy source you would follow rather than inventing one.
One habit lifts a literature plan quickly: write the essential question you want students arguing about by the end, then check that your assessment actually asks it. If the summative task could be completed by a student who read a summary, the question was never doing any work.
What separates Competent from a plan sent back
Aspects score independently, and literature plans usually return for one of two reasons: a rationale without criteria, or an assessment that measures recall.
- The text choice is argued from complexity, readers and standard together.
- Objectives use the standard's verb and the assessment matches it.
- Discussion has a structure, and student claims are required to point at the page.
- Supports are tied to the specific demands of this text.
- Difficult content is acknowledged with a professional plan rather than avoided.
- At least one passage is quoted and used.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs days rather than standing. Those days matter in a six-month flat-rate term where the measure is courses closed. Our boundaries stay fixed: we never sit a proctored objective assessment, never ask for portal credentials, and never teach a lesson, contact a school or complete field placement paperwork for you.
Six mistakes that cost time in D838
- Choosing the book first. Starting from a favourite and reverse-engineering a standard produces a rationale nobody believes, including the evaluator.
- Justifying complexity with one number. Quantitative measures miss irony, structure and background knowledge, which are what actually make a book hard.
- Assessing with plot questions. If a summary would pass the task, the task is not measuring interpretation.
- Ignoring the students who cannot yet read the text. Supports have to address this book's specific demands, not offer general encouragement.
- Avoiding difficult content silently. The professional move is to name it, plan for it and have an alternative, not to pretend the book is uncomplicated.
- Writing about themes instead of teaching. A literary essay in place of an instructional plan misses every aspect that asks what students will do.
How support works on this course
Send the task directions and the scoring detail from your Course of Study, plus the text if you have chosen one. What comes back is a rationale built from real selection criteria, an instructional sequence that covers before, during and after reading, a discussion structure that requires textual evidence, and a summative task that a plot summary could not satisfy.
If you have not chosen a text yet, ask first. Ten minutes on selection saves the rewrite that happens when a book cannot carry the standard the rubric is scoring.
The other frequent request on this course is help reading a text you have not taught before with an instructional eye rather than a reader's eye. That means locating the passages where the writer does something worth studying, marking where the reading gets hard for a thirteen or sixteen year old, and identifying the two or three questions that would sustain a whole lesson. Once a text is annotated that way, the plan writes itself in a fraction of the time.
Questions students ask about D838
Is D838 the same course as EDUC 6067?
Do I have to use a young adult novel?
What if the book I want deals with difficult subject matter?
Text chosen and the rationale still reads as enthusiasm?
Send your directions and your text. You get selection criteria that hold up, a sequence across before, during and after reading, and an assessment a summary could not pass.
Where D838 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. 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.