Students in upper-level courses are expected to observe disciplinary conventions in writing assignments. Common recommendations for teaching conventions require substantial time for instructor feedback and in-class instruction. As an alternative, we tested the effectiveness of a checklist in improving students' performance of these conventions.…

Traditional writing assignments often fall short in addressing problems in college students' writing as too often these assignments fail to help students develop critical thinking skills and comprehension of course content. This article reports the use of a two-part (staged) writing assignment with postscript as a strategy for improving critical…

To teach science writing effectively, scholars encourage combining writing to learn with applications of the science writing heuristic. How teachers learn to do so remains under-examined. This essay follows a cohort of ninth-grade science teachers who collaborated in a project to develop, test, and revise such a combination of writing prompts for…

This article shares strategies that educators can use to assist students in meeting the challenges of academic writing more effectively. In order to foreground an understanding of struggling writers, the text begins with a brief review of composition theory and history related to basic writers and identity. It goes on to examine classroom…

Discusses a process to guide students at various levels of writing ability to inquire into unfamiliar and often intimidating subject areas. Notes the process is based on a Piagetian learning cycle that asks students to identify areas of cognitive dissonance, and to engage in a conversation about ways of resolving their uncertainty. (RS)

When students study the discipline of statistics, a domain that can be remote and abstract for them, it is critical that they understand what the numbers mean and how those numbers help people arrive at decisions. This paper presents different approaches that help students learn how researchers actually work with statistics and shows how students…

This report offers a number of specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help 4th- to 12th-grade students in this nation's schools. The report focuses on all students, not just those who display writing difficulties, although this latter group is deservedly the focus of much attention. The premise of this report is that all students…

Argues that effective history instruction requires students to think about content rather than merely reproduce it. Contends that this can be achieved best through peer interaction based on student research papers that require students to state opinions or positions. Provides an assignment example and a evaluation handout. (CFR)