Writing Across the Curriculum

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Writing Across the Curriculum

• Ideas for Engaging Students in Writing and
  Learning

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You Never Know
Sarah Ruhl Wrote her first play in 4th grade.
A court room drama about land masses because she
loved words like isthmus and peninsula. Now she
is a Pulitzer contender for The Clean House.
Apollo 13 Scientist had to design a
supplementary carbon dioxide removal system for
the square canisters using only items that were
available on the spacecraft. Following the how to
instructions from mission control, it took the
astronauts about 1 hour to build the device out
of plastic bags, cardboard, parts from a lunar
suit and a lot of tape.
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Create Learning Logs
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Why do we write?

• Writing is
• Practical
• Lists, reminders, notes, instructions, directions
• Job-Related
• Memos, letters, papers, reports, articles,
  proposals
• Stimulating
• Helps provoke and organize (logically and
  concisely) thoughts
• Social
• Thank-you letters, notes, conversation
• Therapeutic
• Format to express feelings

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Writing Well Requires

• Clear Thinking activate schema
• Sufficient Time
• Reading exposure to structure and genre
• A Meaningful Task relevance
• Interest - choice
• Practice - modeling
• Revising - feedback

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3 Kinds of Classroom Writing Activities

• Self-Sponsored writing
• Formal Assignments
• Writing to learn
• Writing serves as a tool to get students engaged
  and thinking about ideas
• Short, spontaneous, unedited, exploratory,
  personal pieces of writing
• Intended to channel, crystallize, record, direct
  or guide ones thinking

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• Writing to learn is not the same as learning to
  write. Consider them flip sides of a coin that
  work to support one another.

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Why Write Across the Curriculum?

• Students learn by writing
• They learn to write by engaging in a variety of
  academic writing activities
• They learn subject matter by writing about it
• Writing helps get important work done like
  thinking, exploring, relating, making connections
• Kids are shown every day in countless ways that
  they can take power over writing and, through
  writing, think for themselves and express
  themselves.

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Benefits for Students

• Gives them a resource for better understanding
  content through assimilation and connections
• Practice a technique that aids in retention
• Begin to write better
• Active learners are active thinkers lessens
  passivity
• Teacher becomes facilitator move toward student
  centered classrooms

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Points to Consider

• Need for review is lessened
• Fewer students need reteaching
• Less reteaching time is needed
• Not graded not an increase in workload for
  teachers
• Improves higher-order reasoning skills

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Learning Logs

• Pause To Write in Learning Logs
• Pausing to Paraphrase Solidifies Learning
• Listening Response
• Write Extended Definitions in Learning Logs
• Learning Log Swap

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Making it Successful

• Develop a bank of strategies used in all classes.
• Develop a common language used in all classes.
• Use strategies on a daily basis.
• Model for students using teacher and student
  samples
• Bring student samples to the table for discussions