Education Commons^™

In The Classroom: Reading And Writing In The Content Areas (Dec. '89), Michael P. French, Kathy Everts Danielson, Maureen Conn, Willa Gale, Charlene Lueck, Mona Manley

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Students comprehend content material by reading, discussing, writing, questioning, investigating, exploring, and organizing. Reading and writing in the content areas relates prior knowledge, classroom interaction, cooperative learning, vocabulary instruction, and questioning techniques. Children practice research skills by organizing information in a meaningful and practical manner. This month's In the Classroom column presents ways in which teachers can enhance their students' comprehension of content area topics by involving them in various classroom activities. Additional resources for content area reading and writing activities follow :

Dupuis, M.M. (1983). Reading in the content areas: Research for teachers. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Graves, …

Teaching Critical And Creative Thinking Skills As Part Of The Technical Communications Curriculum, Anne Harrington

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

I incorporated critical thinking instruction in the writing curriculum by using three writing projects: journal writing, a policy paper on AIDS, and an assignment to evaluate grammar checkers. In their journal writing students both generated and evaluated ideas. In the AIDS project, they reinforced these convergent and divergent thinking skills within the context of a real-world issue. For the software project, students practiced thinking skills in an arena that was more technical and objective, but in which they were evaluating fundamental writing criteria. These diverse assignments, based on a philosophically compatible approach to the teaching of writing, helped students develop …