This article reports on the types of scientific writing found in two primary grade classrooms. These results are part of a larger two-year study whose purpose was to examine the development of informational writing of second- and third-grade students as they participated in integrated science-literacy instruction. The primary purpose of the…

Explanation as a genre may support children's reasoning and understanding particularly effectively. In this study, 20 fourth graders were given the task of explaining the effects of a pollutant on an ecosystem to third graders. Before writing, they completed a commercially developed science unit, instruction in reading and writing an explanation,…