Jessica Fries-Gaither's List: Writing for Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects 6-12

This page from the Arizona Department of Education includes documents with explanations and examples of the Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects Standards from the ELA Common Core. Scroll down to find these documents by grade band (6-8, 9-10, 11-12).

This powerpoint presentation, given by Katherine McNeill and Pam Pelletier at the 2012 NSTA National Conference in Indianapolis, IN, discusses the Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning (CER) Framework and provides samples of student work.

This powerpoint presentation, presented by Katherine McNeill and Joseph Krajcik at the 2012 NSTA National Conference in Indianapolis, IN, discusses the CER Framework and includes information on writing good CER questions.

In this lesson, students explore environmental issues that are relevant to their own lives, self-select topics, and gather information to write persuasive essays. Students participate in peer conferences to aid in the revision process and evaluate their essays through self-assessment. Although this lesson focuses on the environment as a broad topic, many other topics can be easily substituted for reinforcement of persuasive writing.

In this grades 9-12 minilesson, students respond to a hypothetical situation by writing about their position on the subject. After sharing their thoughts with the class, students consider the opposite point of view and write about arguments for that position. They then compare their position with that of their potential audience, looking for areas of overlap. They then revise their arguments, with the audience’s point of view and areas of commonality in mind. Examining the opposing view allows students to better decide how to counter their opponent logically, perhaps finding common ground from which their arguments might grow. Thus, the activity becomes a lesson not only in choosing arguments but also in anticipating audience reaction and adapting to it.

Students will use scaffolding to research and organize information for writing a research paper. A research paper scaffold provides students with clear support for writing expository papers that include a question (problem), literature review, analysis, methodology for original research, results, conclusion, and references. Students examine informational text, use an inquiry-based approach, and practice genre-specific strategies for expository writing. Depending on the goals of the assignment, students may work collaboratively or as individuals. A student-written paper about color psychology provides an authentic model of a scaffold and the corresponding finished paper. The research paper scaffold is designed to be completed during seven or eight sessions over the course of four to six weeks.

A handout from the workshop presented at the annual national meeting of National Science Teachers Association. San Francisco, CA.

Powerpoint from a presentation by Katherine McNeill.

A book about using the CER Framework in middle school science.

After working through a self-paced interactive lesson, students write an essay that explains how transitional fossils provide evidence for evolutionary relationships.

An overview of the RAFT writing strategy.

Learning to write technical instructions is challenging. Writers must consider audience, purpose, context, length, and complexity—plus the specific content of the instructions, such as the steps in using a stapler.

In this lesson, students walk through the process of creating technical instructions by first analyzing existing instructions. They then select an item and an audience for which they will write technical instructions. After writing their own instructions, students conduct usability tests of each other’s instructions, providing user feedback. Finally, students use this user feedback to revise their instructions before publishing them.

In this classroom vignette, Westerville High School teachers Melissa Tucker (intervention specialist) and Lyndsey Manzo (Science teacher) share their advice and insight about integrating writing skills and science content in a differentiated classroom. Journal prompts, Ohio science standards, and samples of student writing are included. Additionally, the teachers discuss in detail how they have implemented, revised, and modified various organization, pedagogical, and curricular strategies to help students succeed on the Ohio Graduation Test.

Do Internet search engines point us to the information that we need or confuse us with irrelevant or questionable information? How can Internet users improve their searches to find reliable information? What are some ways to perform effective searches? In this lesson, students conduct Web searches on open-ended questions, and draw on their experiences to develop guides to searching effectively and finding reliable information online.