Writing Across the Curriculum
From the desk of Carol C…
Writing across the curriculum…it’s a phrase we hear often these days. Any grade level can look through the exemplars and see the level of rigor expected in writing assignments in all areas, not just Language Arts. The first step in helping students attain these expected levels is to make sure we understand what we need to be asking our students to do.
What does “writing across the curriculum” mean?
“Writing across the curriculum” means that students will be assigned meaningful writing tasks in every discipline. These tasks are designed so students can demonstrate what they have learned and to help students deepen their understanding of a particular concept.
Why do students need to write in every subject area?
- Students need to be able to show what they have learned in a variety of ways.
- Writing = learning. As much as I dreaded my high school English tests, history papers, and science reports, even as a teenager I realized that being “forced” to explain and at times defend my thinking gave me a new understanding of the subject matter. To be successful I had to take everything I had learned, analyze it, synthesize it, and then put my thoughts on paper so they were coherent to the reader.
- The more writing practice anybody has the better writer they become. If students write in a curriculum area, they can begin to speak the language of that discipline in a more authentic way.
- Writing enables students to use texts and other resources as tools to justify their opinions or validate their information.
- Students are able to see how events in different subject areas affect each other. Again in high school English, when we wrote opinion or informational pieces, we had to include some type of relevant historical background which included science, music, and art. It was time consuming and could be difficult, but these writing assignments allowed me to deepen my understanding of the subject matter.
Does writing in curriculum areas help students in any way other than by increasing their understanding of the discipline?
Yes! Writing requires critical thinking. Look at everything you must do when you write. You have to pull apart your ideas and organize them. Next, you reread these ideas for accuracy and clarity. Finally, you write your piece making sure that you choose exact words to convey your message. Together each of these thinking processes give writers a richer understanding of the content.
How should I, the teacher, decide what types of writing assignments to give my students?
Make sure you are clear on what it is you want your students to learn/know. If your students are studying the French Revolution, what are the most important ideas that you want them to come away knowing? Causes of and impact it had on France and the rest of world? How might have been avoided?
Look at the Common Core standard for your grade level/subject area and take note of the types of verbs used to convey the standards. Apply these verbs to a relevant writing assignment. For example, in math students may be asked to explain the relationship between mixed numbers and improper fractions in a clear and understandable way. They would be asked to include examples and reasons. To provide practice with the strategy summarizing, students might be asked to trace the events that led to the stock market crash of 1929. When you are deciding what types of written work your students will complete, one of the essential questions must be ” Does this assignment help to deepen my students’ understanding of the material?”.
Last Thoughts
The workplace of the future will require all workers to be able to write coherently. This writing might take the form of instructions directing someone how to change the oil in a car, explaining the answer to a math problem, blogging about fixing errant computers, or showing how you arrived at your conclusion after a science experiment. Written communication has already become vital to today’s teenagers. They use texting, Twitter accounts, and email to convey information to friends. They already see the need for clear communication.
Writing is a critical component of the Core Curriculum. Let’s make sure that we are helping our students ready themselves for the demands of the workplace they will face.