Common Ground, the lower-level integrated reading and writing (IRW) companion text to the best-selling textbook Common Places, guides students through the reading and writing process at the sentence and paragraph level. Providing an easy-to-follow blueprint for students by modeling skills and behavior without being wordy, Common Ground helps students break down each reading and writing skill with step-by-step guidance and clear visuals. Carefully selected readings equip students not only with writing skills but also with the life skills they will need for their college careers and beyond. Common Ground’s extensive and easy-to use grammar and mechanics handbook, included in the text, is tailor-made for IRW students. The methodology relies on building blocks and takes a granular approach, teaching students from the ground up to build confidence, and provides an easy-to-follow blueprint for students, modeling skills and behavior without being wordy. The text avoids making assumptions about students' prior knowledge or current understanding and answers even the most basic questions students might have about a topic. Students must learn to read from a writer's point of view and learn to write from a reader's point of view as this kind of self-awareness develops strong readers and writers. Content is presented through numerous graphics and tables that encapsulate processes. The graphic representation of material provides a visual reinforcement of concepts. The text is divided into five comprehensive parts that cover skills, projects, grammar, and readings. • Parts 1 and 2 (Chapters 1–12) cover basic and more advanced skills, ranging from subjects such as sentences and topics to critical thinking and argument. • Part 3 (Chapters 13–15) contains extended projects that provide students with a chance to work on activities requiring sustained attention. The projects are structured so that students can complete them in two to three weeks while they are mastering the skills in Chapters 1–12. • Part 4 contains the extensive and easy-to-use Grammar and Mechanics Handbook, which is tailored for IRW students, with a minimum of complex terminology. • Part 5, the Anthology of Readings, contains readings and accompanying pedagogy across three themes of high interest to students and features content that will support their college work and their careers. Lexile levels are given for all readings. A master Connect IRW course, Connect Integrated Reading and Writing: The Common Ground Master Course, aligns with chapters and features LearnSmart Achieve topics, chapter and vocabulary quizzes, and PowerPoint presentations as well as discussion board prompts for chapter concepts. Additionally, Power of Process assignments are built around selected chapter readings, and chapter reading and writing assignments are offered in the Power of Process tool and Writing Assignment features.

Common Ground, the lower-level integrated reading and writing companion text to the best-selling Common Places, focuses on guiding students through the reading and writing process at the sentence and paragraph-level. Providing an easy-to-follow blueprint for students by modeling skills and behavior without being wordy, Common Ground approaches and helps students breakdown each reading and writing skill with step-by-step guidance and clear visuals. Carefully selected readings help equip students with not only the writing skills, but also the life skills they will need for their college careers and beyond. Common Ground's extensive and easy-to use grammar and mechanics handbook, included in the text, is tailored made for IRW students.

Common Places represents a cohesive instructional framework to accelerate college readiness. Teaching reading and writing together requires more than just combining separate reading and writing pedagogies. This textbook helps students read from a writer's point of view and write with an imagined reader ever present. It introduces the importance of emotional intelligence, problem solving, metacognition, and self-advocacy. The students integrate skills and are challenged to develop literacy skills by engaging in real-world projects. By developing their skills in this context, students acquire the literacy skills they need to pass challenging college-level courses. In addition to integrating and accelerating instruction, the pedagogy embeds content designed to foster the emotional intelligence development, metacognition, and problem-solving skills students often lack, yet which are correlated with higher grade point averages and a greater capacity to learn. Upper-level projects feature four readings on specific topics and require students to read and analyze the selections and then integrate them effectively in their own source-based, documented essay. Purpose-oriented projects keep students interested and motivated. The handbook puts a strong emphasis on sentence combining and grammar in context. The logical and clear framework presented in Common Places provides an abundance of models that help build students' confidence in their ability to master specific skills as they work through the chapters and the projects. Students are able to model behavior based on the features included in the chapters. The text employs several strategies to help students master the skills of reading and writing in an integrated fashion: *Scaffolded instruction presents reading and writing processes from the ground up. *Students are prompted to think their way through the steps the text provides, not just follow them. *Students are guided to select and combine patterns of development that fit writing purposes-informing, analyzing, evaluating, and persuading. *Sentence combining helps students develop true grammatical competency. *High-interest readings of various lengths from a variety of sources are analyzed for Lexile level. *Graphics replace dense sections of text and gradually transition to text. *Chapters include a variety of methods to inform, engage, and increase skills, such as a fictional student and a new theme on fast food. *LearnSmart Achieve offers an adaptive, individualized learning experience to teach reading and writing skills in tandem, targeting students' particular strengths and weaknesses. *Instructors may add the Grammar and Mechanics Handbook from Common Ground, the lower-level text in this program. *Common Places and Connect Integrated Reading and Writing (a state-of-the-art learning technology product) provide a cohesive instructional framework to accelerate college readiness. New to This Edition *A new introduction to the projects section provides the step-by-step process a hypothetical student uses to complete a project, giving students a specific example of how to complete a project from start to finish with easy-to-follow steps. *Emotional intelligence is given an in-depth focus throughout the second edition, helping students relate elements of their development to their personal growth outside the classroom. *Features like Thinking from an Instructor's Point of View exercises enable students to develop multiple points of view.

Together, Common Places content, the author-created teaching resources, and Connect Integrated Reading and Writing (a state-of-the-art learning technology product) represent a cohesive instructional framework to accelerate college readiness. With a seamlessly integrated foundation in reading and writing strategies, unique purpose-oriented projects for upper and lower level IRW courses, a fresh approach to grammar that emphasizes sentence combining and grammar in context, a step-by-step modeling approach guiding students to emulate the reading/writing cycle, and multiple features to promote metacognitive thinking, Common Places offers a flexible and adaptive approach suitable for any curriculum design or course sequence.

Common Places, along with its author-created teaching resources and Connect Integrated Reading and Writing (a state-of-the-art learning technology product), represent a cohesive instructional framework to accelerate college readiness. With a seamlessly integrated foundation in reading and writing strategies, Common Places offers unique purpose-oriented projects for upper level IRW courses and provides a fresh approach to grammar that emphasizes sentence combining and grammar in context.