Writing for Science Translates Into Good Writing Period

By barbara on 22 May | 4 comments

Deb Schochet, a third-grade teacher at Olympic View Elementary School in North Seattle patiently binged the xylophone one more time.

Can the students hear the difference between the tones made by the longer bars, versus the shorter? If so, explain it in their science notebooks. Talk with your neighbor about it. So the 20 or so kids in her class yesterday did just that. The childish gumbo of words floated over the room with expressions like "Because of this..." "If that happens, then this must be..."

Schochet was demonstrating a science writing project that is teaching students how to write in science class and explain their answers. According to Schochet and Betsy Rupp Fulwiler, a school coach, asking students to write and explain their hypothesis is resulting in higher writing scores across the board in this and other schools using the approach. The project, funded by an NSF grant and started about seven years ago, is one of the few of its kind in the nation, linking science and writing into a complete unit.

Yesterday, five teachers from the Yakima School District were observing the class, in the hopes of beefing up their program east of the mountains.

Rupp Fulwiler told me that studies from UCLA have shown an overall improvement in writing when this method is used. I'll try post a link to that report later today.

Comments

Posted: Fri, 05/25/2007 - 1:15pm — barbara

One More Link for You

On the full reports on this program from the Inverness Research Associates Group.

Posted: Fri, 05/25/2007 - 12:01pm — barbara

Integration is Needed To Catch Their Interest

I totally agree. The integration of science and writing, and let's say, social studies and art, is essential. Not only do teachers not have enough time in the day (I'm looking at my 13-year-old daughter's schedule as we speak) but they are pressed to cover so many topics now. And blending the topics catches the students' interest, no doubt. I was up until 11 pm last night (I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but here I am) helping her sketch out small art pieces on different parts of the world (ever try to do a quick sketch of the Taj Mahal?) for her social studies project. I hope to get the studies done on the science writing program up today. I'll post them at the top of the blog so you all can read them before taking a well-deserved three-day break. Barbara

Posted: Fri, 05/25/2007 - 10:30am — Anonymous

Integration

My belief is that you need to make school REAL to students. Schools that are struggling tend to move to a structured program that becomes less like the real world of learning and more like a system of learning. Schools that truly embrace integration of science/writing as well as reading and technology will touch the learning needs and styles of more students than just the well we are going to write a story and here is the topic. My experience is when you blur the lines between the contents, kids roll up their sleeves and really become engrossed in the learning because some piece of it really addresses their learning style. My favorite comment from a student in my Humanities class - no we never do reading. (This is after we finished reading the book How to write the Constitution and each team wrote their own constitution for their "country".)

Posted: Thu, 05/24/2007 - 10:07pm — Anonymous

Good start

Nice to see the integration of science and writing. I hope this can be expanded to other areas. I think our educational system is too compartmentalized and doesn't reflect real life. Since when did you tackle the "math" portion of your job, then the "history" portion and then the "reading" portion? I think education would seem more relevant to students if it more closely reflected real life.