How To Write To Learn Science

Make science an exhilarating process of discovery! Through a wealth of creative write-to-learn strategies, this book offers inspiring techniques to coax out the reluctant scientists in your classroom. Newly updated and expanded, this NSTA best seller is a storehouse of practical ideas and examples for use with students at all ability levels. It provides classroom-tested writing activities that you can: Introduce during the first week of class to build positive attitudes among students toward the subject of science, and toward you; Use at different stages in a learning unit and for quick review; and Adapt to help students write for different audiences, write to better understand the textbook, and write lab reports, research papers, and essay tests. Added to this edition is a special section, How Science Portfolio Assessment Can Improve Student Writing, that describes ways portfolios help students focus on their work throughout the year, document science concepts they ve mastered or not and serve as powerful assessment tools. There are many books about writing to learn, most authored by education or English professors who focus on theories of writing. This book is different it s full of classroom-tested, pragmatic approaches from high school science teachers who used the ideas to make teaching and learning more creative endeavors. The authors put their own good advice to work, writing in an appealing, personal style to convey teaching concepts and learning goals. As Bob Tierney says, expressive writing is a vehicle for the exhilaration of discovery.

This is a definitive and comprehensive resource for the most up-to-date, best- practice teaching ideas dealing with science and literacy. It is perfect for educators who need to justify the integration of science and literacy with scientifcally based research. Examples of student work and classroom-ready teacher pages make it practical and useful for teachers of K-8th grade. --Reviewed by: Pat B (Madison, OH) on November 4, 2007

Science and Writing -- the Perfect Couple! This no-nonsense guide to using writing in the science classroom gives countless tips that can be used from day one of the school year. Suggestions can be modified for many grade levels, and will help students think through problems as they put their ideas on paper. A related topic that I would love to see NSTA focus upon is nature journaling as a classroom tool, as demonstrated so beautifully by Clare Walker Leslie in Keeping a Nature Journal. --Reviewed by: Pat B (Madison, OH) on November 4, 2007

This book shows not only how to use writing effectively in the science classroom, but also the author's reason and passion behind his views. Suggestions for writing in the science classroom are offered, along with the rationale. --Reviewed by: Bonnie Keller (Richmond, VA) on November 1, 2007