Author: Timothy Ferris Summary: Ferris explains that he writes as a way to learn science and describes the vital role that science has played in changing the world for the better. He discusses how writing for general audiences can help scientists to “clarify their own thinking, by obliging them to...
Summary: The “Why I Write” series highlights people who write as professionals across disciplines including science, geology, music, environmental studies and education, among others. This collection includes a few short videos that accompany the articles and is especially useful in connecting writing in school to the real world purposes of...
Summary: This overview provides key information about the National Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) and how it works, along with the results from multiple years/areas of the country. In “About the Program,” teachers can find resources that complement each other in a year-round approach to teaching...
Author: Carla Gubitz Jankowski Summary: Integrating high school curricula isn’t easy, but it is worth the effort and produces powerful results for students and teachers. In this resource, a teacher describes her award-winning project to develop teaching teams that designed cross-curricular units in order to foster students’ personal and intellectual connections...
Summary: This resource from NWP’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) features two strategies that teachers can use to assess students’ source-based arguments. The “Using Sources Tool” focuses on the quality of students’ claims and how well they use evidence to support them. The “Claim, Evidence, Reasoning Protocol” can...
Author: Antero Garcia Summary: Acknowledging that, in these early years of the digital age, “literacies are changing . . . a lot,” Antero Garcia notes that this “is a resource of a specific moment.” Student projects, blog posts, discussions, and more from Garcia’s course “Teaching Reading,” in which he and...
Author: John Dorroh Summary: In this account of expressive writing in the science classroom, teacher John Dorroh introduces writing to build students’ curiosity, inviting them to wonder, to ask questions, and to imagine. In the process Dorroh wrestles with the issue of assessment and also demonstrates the importance of teacher-as-writer...
Summary: This issue brief, from the TESOL International Association, is an overview of the Common Core State Standards that also outlines some of the initiatives in place to address the needs of English learners (ELs) in relation to the Standards. Excerpts from this resource may be useful in study groups...
Author: Roni Jo Draper, Paul Broomhead, Amy Petersen Jensen, and Daniel Siebert Summary: If you are looking for a book chapter that will help you think through content area reading and writing beyond taking tests and basic writing, read this. Facilitators planning and/or framing the thinking of a group that...
Summary: Imagine out-of-school learning spaces where museum and library educators create digital access for youth. The discussion focuses on students as makers rather than as consumers. Organizational partners discuss ways in which YOUmedia Network has impacted educators’ commitments to teen learning.