Student Engagement and Writing Tasks in Science Classrooms

In science classrooms, students have difficulty understanding the terminology and new vocabularies used in science textbooks. In addition, science concepts and facts are challenging for most students. However, informational text or science concepts are not too difficult if students are able to use science vocabulary and language in writing. Incorporating writing tasks in science content and across content area will support full student participation in science learning activities. This paper summarizes the negative effects of lack of writing literacy in science classrooms, and points out the scarcity of writing tasks in core content areas such as science. In addition, it emphasizes the positive impacts of writing tasks as it promotes student engagement in a wide variety of scientific writing activities such as taking notes following hands-on activities, writing summaries following small-group reading from the texts, using concise data in graphs, and extending newly learned science concepts. Moreover, the paper provides an example of writing task and aligns with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which are currently used in Oklahoma, USA. The writing task is implemented in a middle school science classroom with the collaboration of science teacher and language arts teacher. Lastly, it enables science teachers to use a writing rubric in order to analyze how students use their imagination to articulate and organize scientific ideas.