writing in subject areas

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writing in subject areas
By Julianne

Two ideas you might want to try:

First, you can model the writing process by including it as a whole group activity after a lesson. Introduce a new topic in math or science, have students complete an assignment, then
have them gather together with you to compose a piece of writing explaining what they did and why. Make the writing piece exactly what you will want from them when they begin to write independently. To enrich the experience you can have students do the actual writing on chart paper (interactive writing). Display the results so you can point to them when you begin to expect students to

write on their own.

Another thing to try is to have students begin writing in a journal at the start of the school year, then carefully guide them toward using the journal to record their subject-area learning. You can begin the year by giving them easy suggestions for writing (what I did this summer, If I had a pet, etc.) Move to more specific writing instruction (Describe the steps in multiplying, explain how we did our water experiment, etc.)

As to evaluation, you have so many choices. Are you going to look mostly at content or is grammar and spelling going to be equally important? I tend to overlook style in favor of content. But I teach first grade where if they can write one sentence we cheer vigorously! I think writing through the content areas is a wonderful strategy. I wouldn't be too concerned about how you evaluate it at first. Just get it implemented and see how they do. Then decide what you want to do with the results. You may find that this is a form of self-evaluation and it's unnecessary for you to grade it.