Writing in the Content Areas Flashcards
True or False: Writing in language arts is vastly different from writing in other subjects.
___ is thinking written down. It’s a powerful skill that helps students learn how different people think, which is the main purpose of math, science, and history in the curriculum.
Writing
Improving one’s ___ skills improves one’s ___ to learn
writing; capacity
Many of the skills that are involved in writing reinforce and are reinforced by ____ skills.
reading
effective practices for strengthening reading through writing
- have students write about what they read
- teach students the writing skills & processes that go into creating text
- increase how much students write
having students write about a text they read should enhance reading comprehension bc:
- it affords greater opportunities to think about ideas in a text
- requires them to organize & integrate those ideas into a coherent whole
- fosters explicitness
- facilitates reflection
- encourages personal involvement with texts
- involves students transforming ideas into their own words
Characteristics of Effective Reading & Writing Strategies
- personal involvement in the texts being read and written (making choices, taking positions, or viewing topics)
- foster critical understanding
- engage readers & writers in the revision process
- ask students to examine, assess, utilize, and monitor their PERSONAL FEELINGS about the topics they are reading.
- provide steps during which students carefully & thoroughly assess, monitor, and use their prior knowledge
writing a personal response to a narrative material read or writing about a personal experience related to it.
Responding to a Personal Text
Students reexamine their text/s to choose pertinent facts and ideas in order to create a conversation with the author, an important person, or an imagined character who can relate to main events or concepts in the content (making up conversations; includes concepts learned in the convo)
possible dialogues
- Tell students to examine one or more texts for facts and ideas about a content area topic.
- Ask them to list or think about key facts and ideas from the passage.
- Emphasize that students need to determine a specific viewpoint for their information.
- Explain that they will write from a specific viewpoint in the form of a dialogue with another person.
Steps for Possible Dialogues
In this strategy, students assume a role-playing situation by writing a letter about the topic they have been studying.
unsent letters
It is an effective after reading strategy for writing that requires students to focus on important concepts of a topic and follow a formula to compose a biographic poem featuring certain concepts.
biography poem
This writing practice involves sifting through a text to determine what is most relevant and transforming and reducing the substance of these ideas into written phrases or key words
writing notes about a text
focus on writing an analysis of the characters in a novel or short story, writing a paper showing how to apply material that was read, and analyzing a text in writing to develop a particular point of view.
analysis & interpretation
a strategy that works to improve students’ reading comprehension and summary writing skills by honing their abilities to analyze and synthesize content
Generating Interactions Between Schema and Text (GIST)
- From the assigned text, choose 3 to 5-paragraph passage that discusses an important concept.
- Show the students the first paragraph of the passage. Have them read it silently and then write a summary of 20 words or fewer. Encourage them to use as many of their own words as possible in writing.
- Using the individual
summaries students wrote as basis for discussions, generate a class summary. - Show the next paragraph and again have the students write a summary of 20 words or fewer encompassing Paragraphs 1 and 2.
- Continue this process until a
GIST statement has been developed for the entire passage. Encourage the students to use no more than 40 or 50 words in their final summaries. - After practice, students will be able to generate GIST statements on their own.
Steps for GIST
- Provide students with some
direction for using [who, what, who, when, where, and how] questions as they can take a number of directions. - Prepare a chart that will guide the students while (or after) they read.
- Use the same question framework after they discuss the text, and then ask, “What if…happened?”
Steps for Reader’s Questions
- After assigning a passage to be read, help students determine a key word from the text. They key word relates directly to the concept being taught.
- Explain to the students that the key word is like a magnet in that it attracts information that is important in the topic.
- Next, ask students to recall details from the passage that are connected to the magnet word. Both the word and the details should be recorded on an index card.
- Have students repeat steps 1 through 3 for each passage. After students have recorded their magnet word and supporting details on cards, show them how the Information can be developed into a short summary. Strive to have students develop a one-sentence summary whenever possible
- Once all the cards have been summarized, ask students to arrange their sentences in logical order to develop a coherent summary.
Magnet summaries
a variation of ‘name poetry.’
It makes students reread the text which leads to enhancement of their knowledge about the topic and to use their creative abilities to transfer the information into a poetic form (“Equation” Poem)
Fact Acrostic
1.Instruct the students to write the letters of the content area topic down the page.
2. Have students write a fact about the topic in each line of the poem.
3. Encourage the students to produce a poem based on the topic.
Steps for Fact Acrostic
- K = know
- W = want to know
- L = have learned.
- Plus = summary that students write using the concept map that they have created.
KWL Plus
K = list facts that they know about the topic (activating prior knowledge)
N = questions about what they need to know about the topic
D = make a list of the things they need to do
KND Chart
encourages students to look at a topic from various aspects while using their writing & speaking skills to demonsyrate knowledge
Cubing
- Introduce the topic.
- Give students enough
time to consider each
side of the cube. - Ask them to talk or write
about the topic from
any of the six possible
aspects.
Steps for Cubing
