Helps students connect science concepts with real world issues at New York's Baruch College. Fuses journalistic writing and research techniques into introductory science courses by requiring students to write journal articles based on knowledge generated during course work. Discusses successes and failures of this project. (ASK)

Little evidence has been presented to support the claim that writing enhances learning in mathematics. Presents a scheme for coding the parts of written mathematical presentations. Describes a study done with eighth-grade students, the findings of which reveal that the writing closely resembled the style of the typical mathematics textbook used by…

Describes a mathematical autobiography as a written history of a person's journey of learning and using mathematics either in or out of the classroom setting. Explores the idea of using mathematics autobiographies to enhance student learning in mathematics. (Contains 11 references). (ASK)

This study examined how deaf students construct meaning through writing during authentic science activities. Analysis of writing samples (N=228) indicated that certain process writing strategies were differentially useful including writing prompts used by teachers, focus for the writing, follow-up to the initial writing activity, the teacher's…

Science notebooks are an everyday part of learning in the Tucson (AZ) Unified School District. Recently, K-8 schools there began using notebooks in conjunction with their kit-based science program. As part of the district's professional development team, the authors helped during the implementation at Miller Elementary, where teachers and students…

Psychology undergraduates need to produce good quality essays in order to succeed at university. Students find the transition to university writing difficult. Using a rubric, a profile of student weakness in psychology essay writing was described. The students were generally poor at the structural organisation of their essays. A pilot intervention…

Instructions are an essential communication component of organizations, but even advanced students seldom admit any shortcomings in direction-writing. Whether printed material for customers on how to use a product (construct the children's play set, connect a DVD player to a home entertainment center, or program a car radio's stations), formal job…

A Professional Development Schools partnership between the University of Maryland and other elementary schools in the district worked together to explore, discuss and reflect on the challenges of helping students to write about mathematics. Finding ways to help students effectively communicate their mathematical thinking is a challenge for…

This pilot study obtained baseline information on verbal and visual rhetorics to teach microscopy techniques to college biology majors. We presented cell images to students in cell biology and biology writing classes and then asked them to identify textual, verbal, and visual cues that support microscopy learning. Survey responses suggest that…

The aim of the study was to examine reading and writing tasks as learning tools in higher education in Spain. The participants were 171 undergraduates from three different university degree courses. The data were gathered through a questionnaire that explored the kind of tasks carried out by the students, their perception of different aspects of…

A study investigated the effect of writing in statistics classes on students' interpretation skills (translating the results of data analysis into verbal interpretations that are accessible to non-statisticians). One hundred twenty-two students in three statistics classes received either low, moderate, or high instructional emphasis in…

A singular means of blending the history, language arts, and journalism classes is by teaching oral history. By assigning students oral history projects, the teacher helps students place themselves within a living history in the United States. For example, Eliot Wigginton, a public high school English teacher in Rabun Gap, Georgia, whose classes…

Noting that a case-study approach can stimulate student thinking and learning, this paper describes how students in a writing-intensive course on parasitology wrote brief medical case studies of parasites already studied for other students to read, evaluate, and identify the parasite. The paper presents a brief description of the course, an…

This publication describes how writing in mathematics classes in Australia can be beneficial to students and their teachers, including: journal writing, expository writing, and transactional writing. In addition, it reports the results of a study that examined benefits derived by five secondary school mathematics teachers from reading their…

Effective informational writing assignments show students that creativity and imagination are essential to the generation of new ideas in all content areas. A collection of these assignments has been arranged into five categories of increasing complexity based on the following criteria: whether the point of view is assigned as self-selected;…