Whether you are a parent, teacher, administrator, student, or none of these, you most likely realize the importance of teaching students to think, and one of the best ways of achieving this goal is to teach students to write. Yes, TEACH students to write. This initiative belongs to parents and all educators, not just language arts teachers. It can be accomplished with a little guidance and time.
Writing in all content areas is writing to learn. Research has much to say about this very subject. As the research is not the point of this post, you see here only a bulleted list of the research.
- Best to integrate writing
- Writing is active engagement.
- Increases comprehension
- Helps make connections
- Makes us think about what we know or don’t know
- Motivates us to go where our interests are
- Enhances and refines thinking skills
- Organizes knowledge
- Enhances vocabulary
- Talking plus writing equals better retention.
- Helps students explain, describe, predict, and integrate
- Improves problem-solving
- Promotes inquiry
- Improves application
- Information/concepts are understood at a deeper level.
That is powerful information and should encourage us all to make some changes in how we approach writing in our classes. Writing helps to clarify and solidify what students have learned and helps them respond to what they read., so why is it so hard to do?
As we are ALL responsible for helping students learn to think, I will offer you some realistic suggestions, tried-and-true, to implement immediately. (A canned writing program will not accomplish the goal…) Writing is another way to monitor student learning and understanding. It increases understanding which will result in increased achievement in the content areas. WRITING is actually key. We cannot assume, however, that students can write effectively without our teaching them the HOW of writing.
For some background, students are expected to be proficient in writing narratives, persuasive/argumentative, and informational pieces, among others, and all of these can be used in others content areas, not just in ELA classes. The standards ask for more non-fiction reading and writing and to accomplish the writing , students collect data from numerous sources, both primary and secondary sources. Getting this accomplished takes direction from teachers and parents.
Writing in the content areas is NOT teaching students to write. It is applying what they know and have learned in their ELA classes. That being said, writing should be done daily and expected in every class. Following are strategies to help you get started now.
- Journals for reflections, summaries, quick-writes, self-assessments, think-pair-share, and research notes
- Notetaking (teach how): Chunk lectures and have summarization every 5-15 minutes.
- Read, analyze, and emulate argumentative pieces.
- Read info texts and look for evidence they can use to make claims in their writing.
- Give feedback on what students have done well and what they need to improve.
- Include writing on tests, notes, homework, quizzes.
- Teach vocabulary.
- Use word splashes.
- Use Concept Cards: On one side, students write the basic concept, procedure, etc.. On the other side, students explain… You could also accomplish the same thing with the Cornell Notes approach.
- In math, have students defend answers or routes taken in math. Create word problems.
- Journals, essays, timed-writing, response questions, open-ended questions
- Science writing is objective, logical, and precise. It includes lab reports, writing prompts to summarize, writing texts to explain graphs, analyzing, writing journals to outline procedures and findings, and writing to evaluate lectures and seminars.
- Summarizing in informational texts: One-sentence summary, Cornell notes, Big Picture questions, synthesizing, and the RAFT strategy
- Creativity has a place in science writing, as well. Students can write a first person account of a major volcano, a story describing food’s journey, a kid’s book explaining a scientific concept, you get the idea…
The key is to help students think, reflect, and organize. What better way to do this than to write! We are preparing our children for their tomorrows.