by challenging your students to make story problems out of simple addition or subtraction. This is a particularly successful exercise for third and fourth graders who are just beginning to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to conceptualize outcomes.

2. At the beginning of the school year ask each student to write a one to two page essay, choosing from such topics as "My Favorite Kind of Math," "The Math Teacher Who Taught Me the Most,"" How I Feel about Taking Math," or even, "What the World Would Be Like without Math?"

3. Require each student to keep a written log of each math assignment, including any oral instructions given in class.

4. Challenge students to think about how a particular kind of math could be used in the real world and write about it.

5. Instruct older students to look at mathematical problems that they have answered incorrectly and write out how the problem should have been worked.

Writing Across the Curriculum in Science

1. Require students to keep a lab notebook and record the results of every experiment done in class.

2. Have students choose a prominent scientist in history and write a report about his life and contributions to science.

3. Have students take notes in class and then rewrite them, using complete sentences.

4. Give a list of science terms for each unit of study and ask students to look up their meanings and then use each word in a sentence.

5. Ask each student to complete a science project and include a written summary of the project, answering the questions, what, why, when, how, where, and who.

Writing Across the Curriculum in History

1. Have students choose a biography of a famous person from the period of history being studied, and then prepare a written book report.

2. Ask each student to choose a period of history that most interests them (from within the timeline of subject matter being studied), and write about it.

3. Invite guest speakers to address the class and then require that each student prepare a critique of the material presented.

4. Watch a historical film and then have each student write a brief synopsis of the film and share what interested them the most.

5. Challenge students to rewrite a piece of history that could have most positively impacted the events that followed.

Ideas presented here should prompt your discovery of other innovative approaches for implementing writing activities across your own curriculum. Many of these exercises will enhance your students' communication skills as well as enrich their learning experiences in the various disciplines. By writing to learn and writing in the disciplines, students will continue to refine forms of written expression and become lifelong learners in the acquired skill of writing.

Footnotes

[1] http://www.ride.ri.gov/HighSch oolReform/DOCS/PDFs/HIGH%20sch ool%20reform/HSDiploma_v071405 .pdf

Learn more about this author, Dr. Deborah Bauers.
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