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Writing in the content areas articles about education

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    Journalistic Writing


About Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC):

Basic Principles of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)
In response to the need of students to learn content using a variety of strategies, and their need to practice writing in a variety of contexts, many teachers have adopted the strategies associated with WAC. The following principles underlie WAC:

  • Writing promotes learning.
  • Integration of writing and the writing process promotes student participation, a diversity of student voices, and engages students as critical thinkers while promoting their texts as important resources and thinking tools.
  • Effective writing instruction integrates disciplines.
  • The opportunity to write in every class develops good writers.
  • Using writing as part of instruction can be used in every classroom.
  • Only by practicing the thinking and writing conventions of an academic discipline will students begin to communicate effectively within that discipline.

Writing is not simply a process of developing an essay. Writing across the curriculum is an effort to use writing to demonstrate knowledge and understanding. At times, using writing to learn can show a disconnect in a student’s understanding of a concept. Writing can also show a student’s mastery of a concept. Specific strategies can be used to help students understand, retain, master, and synthesize learning.

Writing To Learn: Writing-to-learn fosters critical thinking, requiring analysis and application, and other higher level thinking skills. It is writing that uses impromptu, short or informal writing tasks designed by the teacher and included throughout the lesson to help students think through key concepts and ideas. Attention is focused on ideas rather than correctness of style, grammar or spelling.

Writing in the content areas articles about education Examples include

It is less structured than disciplinary writing.This approach frequently uses journals, logs, micro-themes, responses to written or oral questions, summaries,free writing, notes and other writing assignments that align to learning ideas and concepts.

A writing-to-learn strategy is one that teachers employ throughout and/or at the end of a lesson to engage students and develop big ideas and concepts.Teachers use writing to learn strategies to enhance the learning in the classroom. Writing exercises can be used prior to a lesson to assess prior-knowledge. Students can use Cornell Notes and then write a paragraph that summarizes their learning. Students can use marginal notes to analyze charts or create metaphors to describe a process. Students might also write summaries after a mini-lecture or after reading sections of a chapter. The summary may be written without the aid of notes to assess their recall or it could be used with the notes to help them clarify their understanding.

Writing to Demonstrate Knowledge: When writing-to-demonstrate-knowledge, students show what they have learned by synthesizing information and explaining or applying their understanding of concepts and ideas. Students write for an audience with a specific purpose. Products may apply knowledge in new ways or use academic structures for research and/or formal writing. Examples include essays that deal with specific questions or problems, letters, projects, and more formal assignments or papers prepared over weeks or over a course.

Writing in the content areas articles about education will students

They adhere to format and style guidelines or standards typical of professional papers, such as reports, article reviews, and research papers and should be checked before submitted by the student for correctness of spelling, grammar, and transition word usage.

— Source: Michigan Department of Education

WAC in
English/Language Arts

See the Table of Contents of this teachers’ guide to WAC in English Language Arts for some descriptions, implementation ideas, and examples of these writing-to-learn strategies and writing-to-demonstrate-knowledge techniques and forms/formats:

Writing to Learn Strategies for ELA:

  • Anticipation Guides
  • Before, During and After Interactive Notes
  • Cause-Effect
  • Column Notes
  • Compare/Contrast
  • Concept/Vocabulary Expansion
  • Consolidating Thought (Summarizing, Synthesizing, Inferring, Discussion Web)
  • CRAFTS: Context, Role, Audience, Format, Topic, and Strong Verb
  • Credibility Of a Source
  • FQIP: Focus-Question-Image-Predict
  • Inquiry Charts
  • Idea Funnel
  • Journaling
  • Main Idea
  • Marginal Notes
  • Predict-O-Gram Writing
  • Previewing and Generating Text Purposes
  • Quick Write-Free Write
  • Time-Sequence
  • Understanding Story
  • Visualizing and Recording Mental Images
  • Write-Pair-Share-Write

Writing to Demonstrate Knowledge in ELA:

  • Writing Guidelines
  • Process Writing
  • Conferring
  • Invention: Brainstorming, Nut-Shelling, SCAMPER, etc.
    Principles Of Coherence
  • Peer Reviewing
  • Structures For Compare and Contrast
  • Orchestrating Organization: Outline/Reverse Outline, Webbing/ Clustering/ Mapping, Chunking
  • Thinking Through Writing
  • Using Rubrics For Backwards Planning
  • Essay
  • Informational Texts
  • I-Search Paper
  • Journalistic Writing
  • Multi-Genre Paper
  • Narrative Writing
  • Poetry
  • Research Report
  • Response To Reading
  • Report Writing
  • Toulmin’s Model (Argumentation)
  • Writing From Knowledge and Experience

WAC in English/Language Arts Resources:

WAC in Social Studies

See the Table of Contents of this teachers’ guide to WAC in Social Studies for some descriptions, implementation ideas, and examples of these writing-to-learn strategies and writing-to-demonstrate-knowledge techniques and forms/formats:

Strategies for Writing to Learn in Social Studies:

  • GIST: GIST (Cunningham 1982) is a strategy designed to help students learn to write organized and concise summaries. Summaries restate only the author’s main ideas, omitting all examples and evidence used in supporting and illustrating points. For students who are at a loss as how to put a reading into their own words, GIST can be used as a step by step method.
  • Learning Log: Learning logs are different from traditional journals. Learning logs document the learning that occurs during a class, a project, or a unit of study. Learning logs are excellent tools for individual accountability during collaborative work.
  • Cornell Note-taking. A format for taking notes that uses boxes. It requires students to process material as they are learning it by formulating questions, summarizing, and analyzing. Students can draw lines or simply fold notebook paper to form the blocks.
  • Question-Answer Relationship (QAR): QAR is a way of describing for students that there are four types of questions and possible places for finding answers to those questions. Pearson and Johnson (1978) described the four types of questions as textually explicit (literally stated in the text); textually implicit (suggested or implied by the text); and script implicit (in the reader’s background knowledge or “script” inside the reader’s head). These are known as Right There. Think and Search. and On Your Own type questions.
  • Quick Writes: Quick Writing is a motivating, pre-reading activity that prepares students for reading new material or reviewing material in preparation for understanding new information to be read.
  • RAFT: Role, Audience, Format, Topic: RAFT is an acronym for a structured technique used to guide student writing. RAFT assignments are used to demonstrate a student’s knowledge using a defined point of view. This strategy requires students to write using an assigned format to an audience other than the teacher.
  • Reading Response Journal: Journals have successfully been used as a means for students to express their thoughts, feelings, and reactions about reading.
  • Thinking Maps: A structured thinking map and an outline accomplish the same goal but use two different formats – one formal and one less formal. Thinking maps, the less formal of the two, uses circles and lines to show relationships, while outlines show them through the systematic use of letters and numbers.
  • Word Bank Writing: Writing from a word bank is a strategy used from the earliest grades. Students write a paragraph utilizing words that the teacher has pre-selected.

Writing to Demonstrate Knowledge in Social Studies:

  • Persuasive Civic Writing: This type of persuasive writing is very specific. It is writing focused on an issue of public policy and is intended to persuade public policy makers and other citizens to adopt a particular position. Persuasive civic writing is modeled in the editorial sections of newspapers and magazines across the United States. It is considered to be an important skill for all citizens.
  • Report Writing: Usually shorter in length and scope than a research paper, a report describes and summarizes the findings of an individual or group following a systematic inquiry or an examination of a series of incidents, conversations, studies, interpretation or observations. The purpose of the work is to persuade or inform an audience using factual material.
  • Research Report: The research report is an informational text produced as part of a research project. It summarizes the intent, process, sequence, and content of research, provable findings, and conclusions. Research preceding the report is completed through a systematic inquiry into a subject or problem in order to discover, verify, or revise relevant facts or principles relating to that subject or problem. Credible reporting requires credible research questions and procedures.
  • Using Narrative to Demonstrate Knowledge: The narrative writing basic format is beginning, middle, and end using character, settings and plot. The goal of this type of writing is to demonstrate knowledge learned about individuals, events, causes, and consequences.

WAC in Social Studies RESOURCES:

WAC in Science

Strategies for Writing to Learn in Science:

  • Cause and Effect Graphic Organizer: Have students complete a graphic organizer that explains the cause and effect relationship.
  • Column Notes: Use a T chart to define terms or explain processes.
  • Compare and Contrast: Use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast.
  • Cornell Notes. A format for taking notes that uses boxes. It requires students to process material as they are learning it by formulating questions, summarizing, and analyzing. Students can draw lines or simply fold notebook paper to form the blocks.
  • Vocabulary Trees: Use vocabulary organizers to study the parts of scientific words and their positions in sentences.
  • GIST . GIST (Cunningham 1982) is a strategy designed to help students learn to write organized and concise summaries. Summaries restate only the author’s main ideas, omitting all examples and evidence used in supporting and illustrating points. For students who are at a loss as how to put a reading into their own words, GIST can be used as a step by step method.
  • Journaling (Science Notebooks) or Learning Logs: Learning logs are different from traditional journals. Learning logs document the learning that occurs during a class, a project, or a unit of study. Learning logs are excellent tools for individual accountability during collaborative work.
  • Metaphorical Thinking:
    • Direct Analogy
    • Personal Analogy
    • Simile Review
  • Quick Write/ Exit Slips: Quick Writing is a motivating pre-reading activity that prepares students for reading new material or reviewing material in preparation for understanding new information to be read.
  • Word Bank Writing: Writing from a word bank is a strategy used from the earliest grades. Students write a paragraph utilizing words that the teacher has pre-selected.

WAC in Science RESOURCES:

WAC in Mathematics


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