Reconceptualizing Instruction for Writing in Science Using the WiS Co-Planning Tool

Prioritize Meaningful Purposes for Writing in Science

Scientists use writing to communicate their explanations and arguments about scientific phenomenon in the natural world. Asking students to do the work of scientists and explain their observations and understandings through writing is essential for NGSS-aligned instruction. Building a community of scientific learners who share their ideas and offer feedback to each other is an essential goal for co-teaching teams using the WiS tool. Co-teaching teams will select particular purposes for writing in science that meet CCSS and NGSS writing standards and also work toward the overarching goals: to promote deep learning and to communicate scientific understanding. The purposes are driven by the standards and the ways teachers want students to think about a topic, including explaining, documenting, describing, critiquing, and comparing.

Assign Tasks to Promote Learning

Just like other disciplines, science has its own set of language practices, or discourse, that students can learn. Using scientific discourse, students use language to ask questions and seek answers, evaluate explanations and reasons, explain positions, and pose arguments (NRC, 2012). Writing is how scientists convey their work to their scientific community and greater population, which is why a major emphasis in science education is teaching students how to write using scientific discourse (NRC, 2012).

With the WiS Co-Planning Tool, co-teaching teams will prioritize assigning writing tasks that are most likely to promote deep learning so that no instructional time is lost and students learn how to write using the discourse of science. The act of deliberate writing in and of itself can boost a writer’s learning (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987), but writing using the discourse of science requires that students consider their audience and use the language of a scientist. The two primary writing genres that co-teaching teams will be guided to emphasize using the WiS Co-Planning Tool are explanation and argument. The act of writing within these genres not only promotes deep learning (Klein & Kirkpatrick, 2010) but also requires students to communicate findings to a real-world audience. There are numerous different forms of writing in science that utilize the genres of explanation and argument, such as lab reports, theory papers, science notebook entries, descriptions of models, and research papers.

Implement Evidence-Based Writing Instruction for All Students

There is a direct link between quality writing instruction and adolescent writing performance (Graham & Perin, 2007). Evidence-based practices are instructional approaches that have a substantial body of rigorous scientific research to indicate their promise to meaningfully improve student outcomes (Cook, Tankersley, Cook, & Landrum, 2008). Evidence-based practices such as writing strategy instruction and process writing have been shown to strongly and consistently improve adolescents’ writing quality across content areas such as science (Graham & Perin, 2007). Using the WiS Co-Planning Tool, teaching teams will plan to integrate high-quality writing instruction for all students using evidence-based practices, such as teaching strategies for planning, revising, organizing writing, using technology, or prewriting.

Provide Additional Support for Students With Disabilities or Struggling Writers

There are many ways that writing in the discipline of science is even more challenging than writing in English language arts class. Therefore, struggling writers and students with disabilities will need additional supports beyond what is provided for other students. Using the WiS Co-Planning Tool, teaching teams will be guided toward increasing supports for students with disabilities or struggling writers. Co-teaching teams will select from a menu of evidence-based writing adaptations that provide students additional support.

Collaborative Planning

A major challenge of providing services to secondary students with disabilities is the pervasive lack of planning time or quality planning time between special and general educators (Solis, Vaughn, Swanson, & McCulley, 2012). When time is provided to teachers, the meetings may consist of the general educator explaining the content of the lesson to the special educator without necessarily seeking input. Using the WiS Co-Planning Tool, co-planning teams plan writing instruction in science using a research-based framework that builds from both of their knowledge- and skill-based strengths. This process guides teaching teams toward decisions about why to include writing in science, which writing tasks to assign to boost student learning, how to use effective writing practices to teach writing in science, and how to support struggling writers.

Mr. Butler and Ms. Rocco believe that the components of the WiS Co-Planning Tool are the right place to start when making revisions to their course. They decide to follow the six-step process to design writing instruction to meet the needs of all learners. Together, they will select a purpose for writing that fits within the standards, assign a related writing task, and embed high-quality instructional practices to teach writing in science. For students with disabilities in the class, additional supports will be designed to enhance their foundational writing skills.

Step 1: Establish the Planning Team and Schedule a Time to Meet

As minimal planning time is one of the greatest barriers in effective co-teaching instruction (Solis et al., 2012), using the WiS co-planning process enables teams to tackle that issue first. Therefore, the first step is to establish a working team and schedule a time to meet. The team will begin by asking the guiding questions for this step: Who is part of our team to do this work? When will we regularly meet to plan writing instruction in science?

As minimal planning time is one of the greatest barriers in effective co-teaching instruction (Solis et al., 2012), using the WiS co-planning process enables teams to tackle that issue first.

Teams may consist of two people (one special educator and one science educator), or teams may include the entire science and special education departments at a school or district. All team members will commit to working to improve writing instruction in science with the WiS tool. The team will set a regular meeting time. One longer meeting at the beginning of the school year or before school begins is recommended. With district support, teachers can use the WiS co-planning process during professional development days at the beginning of the school year. In the first meeting, the team will go through the entire six-step process and set initial goals. Regular follow-up meetings are recommended at regular intervals to revisit and track progress.

Step 2: Map the Standards

The guiding question for Step 2 is, What are the prioritized standards? Seeing where the CCSS and NGSS overlap can help teachers overcome the challenges to including writing instruction in science. The text types, or genres, of argument and explanation are emphasized in both sets of standards, so these genres can be prioritized because they help teachers meet both the CCSS and NGSS and also fit well with the disciplinary purposes for writing in science discussed earlier. In Step 2, teams examine and discuss the two sets of standards to determine which standards they have not yet regularly included for writing in science. Then, teams will determine priority standards that include argument and explanation. According to a recent survey of science teachers, it is easier to prioritize writing instruction when it is embedded and aligned to science instruction and not seen as an add-on (Drew & Thomas, 2018). Identifying standards that are emphasized in both the CCSS and NGSS allows for greater efficiency in writing instruction.

Step 3: Select Purposes and Tasks Aligned to Standards

In Step 3, co-teaching teams discuss which purposes and tasks are best aligned to the standards and selected purposes. Co-teaching teams will ask themselves these guiding questions: Which purposes align to the priority standards? Which tasks require students use the selected purposes? Which tasks and purposes can be assigned in each science unit?

First, co-teaching teams will want to prioritize writing purposes and tasks that boost students’ science learning. Classified as writing-to-learn tasks, teachers can assign students to write summaries, compare and contrast responses, or record observations, hypotheses, and initial explanations before, during, and after scientific investigations. Science teachers report more frequently assigning tasks such as these (Drew et al., 2017). Assigning these tasks within a science notebook helps students see the link between writing and learning and enables them to maintain an external memory source of their learning during a given instructional period.

Second, co-teaching teams will also want to prioritize writing-to-communicate tasks, in which students learn how to communicate like scientists. This happens less frequently in science classes (Drew et al., 2017) and, therefore, offers the greatest possibility for improving writing instruction in science. Tasks that require students to carefully consider content material and how they would convey their understanding to an audience are most conducive to deep learning. These types of tasks are called knowledge-building (Chuy et al., 2010) tasks because they have the potential to build knowledge within the writer (student) and also contribute to learning by a reader or a community of readers (audience beyond the student and teacher). Argument and explanation are priority genres because they reflect discipline-specific writing-to-communicate tasks that also boost students’ learning (Drew et al., 2017).

From there, co-teaching teams will identify their science units across the year. It is recommended that co-teaching teams select at least one writing-to-learn task and one writing-to-communicate task for each unit. In many cases, the same task can be used for both purposes (e.g., lab report) depending on the intended audience. Generally speaking, writing-to-learn tasks are assigned to promote students’ thinking and enhance learning and are shared between the student and teacher. Writing-to-communicate tasks are written for purposes and audiences that extend beyond the classroom. They do promote the writer’s learning, as well, but the goal is to build knowledge for the reader or a community of readers. It is highly recommended that teams include only one new task per unit, so students can learn the genre expectations before being exposed to another type of writing.

For example, when using the WiS Co-Planning Tool, a team of middle school teachers decides it wants students to write to explain the disappearance of lobsters in the Long Island Sound. The writing standards it would prioritize include the NGSS practice of constructing explanations and the CCSS of writing explanations of scientific procedures, experiments, and processes. Additional NGSSs include the disciplinary core ideas of global climate change (MS-ESS3-5), human impacts on Earth’s systems (MS-ESS3-3), biodiversity and humans (MS-LS2-5), and the crosscutting concepts of cause and effect (MS-ESS3-3) and stability and change (MS-ESS3-5). The primary purpose for writing is for students to explain, but within the explanation, students would also cite evidence for their explanation and synthesize the resources from which they collected data to support statements within the explanation. The culminating task is a science explanation written first in draft form in the science notebook and then as a letter to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection proposing a solution based on the explanation (NGSS MS-LS2-5, developing possible solutions). Tasks, such as these, that are more authentic or related to real-world contexts and written for real-world audiences are more meaningful and motivational for students (Troia, 2014).

Step 4: Analyze Student Work to Determine Instructional Priorities

For Step 4, the team determines what constitutes effective science writing by responding to the guiding questions: What makes science writing unique? What writing qualities are we looking for in a well-written science composition (e.g., explanation, argument, lab report)? Although the science teacher may be more concerned with content, this step enables all teachers on the team to think about components of a students’ writing (e.g., organization; sentence fluency; vocabulary; mechanics, such as spelling, punctuation, word processing) and calibrate their lists of attributes of high-quality science writing.

Co-planning teams begin by compiling a set of student writing samples from a prioritized task from Step 3. If teams are meeting early in the school year, samples from the previous year can be used. It does not matter which students wrote the samples as long as the samples reflect a range of student performance on a particular writing task. Teams may want to start with lab reports, as many science teachers consider them the most challenging writing students complete in science class (Thomas, 2011). Then, individually, team members read the writing samples and rank-order them in terms of overall writing quality. Each team member makes a list of attributes describing the most effective qualities of the highest-ranked writing pieces. They can also use the weaker examples to create a list of what is missing from the weakest writing samples. Once the lists of attributes are drafted, teams share their lists with each other and compare them to the list provided on Step 4 of the tool. Team members come to a consensus on the qualities they are looking for in a well-written science composition. These qualities will eventually be reflected in the task description and scoring guide. It is important that team members establish a shared vision for high-quality science writing because writing in science is unique from other disciplines. Co-teaching teams will come to a consensus on what they are expecting and what qualities to emphasize for science writing in particular. For example, an English language arts teacher may want students to vary their sentence structure and length for effect, yet high-quality science writing often includes short, simple sentences.

Step 5: Plan Writing Instruction

In Step 5, teams of teachers review a list of evidence-based practices for teaching writing in science and plan their writing instruction. Co-teaching teams consider the following guiding questions: What evidence-based practices can we prioritize and why (given the nature of the science unit)? How much instructional time will we need to dedicate to teaching writing and using the writing process? Teaching writing is as important as—if not more important than—assigning writing in science, particularly for writing-to-communicate tasks. For some teachers, this may be the first time they are learning that there are evidence-based practices to teach writing that can be applied to writing in science. The list of evidence-based practices listed in the WiS Co-Planning Tool can be a guide for teachers who are not sure where to start.

Teachers may be familiar with the evidence-based practices listed in the tool but not sure how to implement these practices. Luckily, the practices themselves give some hints. The practices listed with asterisks next to them indicate the strongest body of evidence to support the link between implementation and improved student outcomes (Graham & Perin, 2007). One of the practices is associated with writing-to-learn tasks: have students use writing as a tool for learning. More of the practices align to teaching students to write to communicate in science class (e.g., explicitly teach the elements of science genre or have students emulate exemplar science texts). Any practices that include the writing process will more likely be used with writing-to-communicate tasks in that these pieces need to be refined considering how to best communicate to an audience.

There are three components of evidence-based writing instruction that encompass five of the six practices with the strongest evidence: (a) explicit strategy instruction, (b) collaboration, and (c) process approach. Beginning with these practices is a great place to start when teaching students to write to communicate in science, especially for teaching teams who have little experience teaching writing in science.

Pedagogy aligned to the NGSS encompasses the science and engineering practices and often follows an inquiry arc, whereby students explore a scientific phenomenon and go through a series of investigations and learning experiences to deepen their understanding of the phenomenon. The science and literacy education research communities have begun to consider the relationship between inquiry and explicit pedagogies and have realized they no longer have to be mutually exclusive (Pearson, Moje, & Greenleaf, 2010). Writing to learn is used to accompany and deepen learning throughout scientific investigations, and explicit instruction is used to teach students how to write a specific science genre, such as explanation.

Explicit strategy instruction in writing is an evidence-based practice that promotes writing development across writing contexts and students (Graham, 2006). Strategy instruction teaches students how and when to use specific writing approaches to develop self-regulated writers. Writing strategy instruction can be used to teach elements of the writing process and approaches to specific genres and forms of scientific writing. It can be used throughout a unit to help students organize, set goals, plan, revise, and edit scientific writing. Explicit strategy instruction includes the following essential components: (a) scaffolds or supports throughout the learning and writing process; (b) teacher statements about purpose for learning and purpose for writing; (c) teacher explanations, demonstrations, and models of writing in the genre; (d) student independent practice with writing in the genre; (e) peer collaboration and feedback; and (f) gradual release of responsibility from teacher to students (Archer & Hughes, 2011). Specific strategies that can be taught in science within an inquiry approach are listed in Step 5 of the tool. Strategies can be taught individually or combined for a particular task or unit. Science teachers report rarely using explicit instruction to teach scientific genre (i.e., several times a year) according to a recent national survey (Drew et al., 2017).

Many of the strategies listed in Step 5 teach students how to use different elements of the writing process or foster collaboration for writing success. Giving students time to take a piece of writing through the writing process is an essential element of effective writing instruction. Very few science teachers include extended writing tasks in which students are given time to compose during science class (Drew et al., 2017). Yet, extended writing is important because it requires students to use a process approach to refine writing, which has been shown to support adolescent writing development (Graham & Perin, 2007). Although the full process approach to writing may not be appropriate in science class given the constraints of time and the focus on content learning, a modified process is feasible to embed in NGSS-aligned learning (Thomas & Drew, 2019). This modified approach better matches the processes of scientists who write to communicate their findings. It includes setting goals for writing, gathering information and research, and planning as prewriting processes and then revising and editing as postwriting processes.

The science and literacy education research communities have begun to consider the relationship between inquiry and explicit pedagogies and have realized they no longer have to be mutually exclusive (Pearson, Moje, & Greenleaf, 2010).

Although the full process approach to writing may not be appropriate in science class given the constraints of time and the focus on content learning, a modified process is feasible to embed in NGSS-aligned learning (Thomas & Drew, 2019).

Step 5 of the tool entails teachers prioritizing at least one evidence-based practice per unit in addition to having students use writing as a tool for learning, which can be used in all units. It is recommended that co-teaching teams use an additive approach and select one new evidence-based practice for the first unit and then build in additional practices across the year, so that by the end of the year, teams are implementing many of the practices. Teams that need additional support implementing evidence-based writing practices can refer to the resources in Table 1.

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Table 1

Additional Resources for Evidence-Based Writing Instruction in Science

Publisher	Resource	Authors	Web link
What Works Clearinghouse	Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively	Graham et al.	https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/22
Carnegie Corporation of New York	Writing Next	Graham & Perin	https://www.carnegie.org/publications/writing-next-effective-strategies-to-improve-writing-of-adolescents-in-middle-and-high-schools/
National Science Foundation and University of Washington	Ambitious Science Teaching	Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten	https://ambitiousscienceteaching.org/
Think SRSD		Harris, Graham, and expert advisers	http://www.thinksrsd.com/srsd/
SRSD Online Training Courses	Writing to Learn	Harris and expert advisors	https://srsdonline.org/teacher-training-courses/
University of Iowa	Science Writing Heuristic	Hand et al.	https://education.uiowa.edu/science-writing-heuristic-swh
	Assorted writing in science resources	McNeill	https://www.katherinelmcneill.com/teaching-resources.html
University of Nebraska and Nebraska Department of Education	Cognitive Strategy Instruction	University of Nebraska-Lincoln	https://cehs.unl.edu/csi/

Step 6: Plan Additional Supports for Students With Disabilities and Struggling Learners

With Step 6 of the WiS Co-Planning Tool, teachers collaborate to plan specific adaptations for their struggling writers and students with disabilities in core science instruction. In Step 6, co-teaching teams consider the following guiding questions: What adaptations can we prioritize and why? Which adaptations would our particular students most benefit from and why? Typical writing challenges are exacerbated because students are often lacking domain-specific vocabulary knowledge, extensive conceptual knowledge, knowledge of scientific text structures and scientific register, and overall academic language. Therefore, struggling writers and students with disabilities will need additional supports beyond what is provided for others.

Struggling writers greatly benefit from explicit instruction of writing strategies that were discussed previously (Graham, 2006). They also benefit from the implementation of the evidence-based writing adaptations outlined in Step 6 of the tool. Most of the adaptations listed can support learners within core science instruction. However, some students may need additional supports outside of science class, including more frequent writing instruction, instruction in a different environment to promote attention and engagement or reduced group size, and instruction that is broken down into smaller components (Troia, 2014).

In Step 6, co-teaching teams consider their specific learners who will need additional support. This will include students with individualized education programs (IEPs) as well as other struggling learners who may be underperforming. In the beginning-of-the-year meeting, this list of students may include only students with IEPs, but as the year progresses, the team may realize that other students also require additional support. For example, in the area of writing, some students may be struggling with what they want to say. These students frequently do well on tests because they have to only reproduce information but require more help in brainstorming and prewriting to communicate ideas. Other students may struggle with the mechanics of writing; they frequently participate orally in class and can communicate their thinking but then surprise teachers by producing written products, especially if under time pressure, that use minimal sentences and below-grade vocabulary for fear of spelling words wrong. The adaptations listed on the tool (see Figure 5 ) should align with students’ IEP goals as well as the CCSS and NGSS.

Following the six steps of the WiS Co-Planning Tool, Mr. Butler and Ms. Rocco co-plan a mini unit on antibiotic-resistant bacteria. They will have students conduct a lab investigation exploring the abundance of bacteria in everyday places. The purpose for writing is for students to construct an explanation for how natural selection leads to adaptation of populations (NGSS HS-LS4-4). Before, during, and after this investigation, students will record in their notebooks their hypotheses, brainstorm how they would test their hypotheses, record procedures, and draft initial explanations. Students will revise their drafts as they learn more and get feedback from teachers and peers to answer the question, “Where exactly can we pick up bacteria from places and things in our everyday world?” The inquiry and writing processes occur simultaneously in the science notebook as students plan their investigation, record procedures and findings, communicate results to their audience in the specific form of an informal lab report, and then revise their writing based on feedback. During the revision phase, Mr. Butler will teach a mini lesson sharing examples of high-quality lab reports from another unit and have students discuss key elements to include to improve their own writing. He will then ask students to collaborate to peer-revise their explanations using a revising checklist. For one of their students in particular, Justin, they have planned the additional support of conferencing and breaking the task into smaller components. As Justin has difficulty completing many written tasks in class, they want to plan ahead to boost his motivation and capacity to successfully write the lab report. While Ms. Rocco is monitoring the whole class, Mr. Butler will work in a small group with Justin providing additional explicit instruction to complete each part of the lab report template and frame along with the lab report checklist. In this example, Mr. Butler and Ms. Rocco have used many of the evidence-based practices listed on the tool (i.e., have students collaborate, have students prewrite and use a process approach, have students emulate science exemplar texts, have students conduct inquiry projects) and also have planned additional supports for Justin and some other struggling learners.