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52
March 5, 1984 C&EN
Book extols writing as a tool for teaching
by K. M. Reese
saw the owner calling the dog for supper you would obserb that ther is a dog living in that house. You are using your senses to obserb." This response got an A. The assignment, Howard says, "exposed the difficulty of grading papers when students write to learn." The teacher's problem was not the number of papers (37), but the difficulty of distinguishing between passing and failing and among marginal, average, above average, and excellent. On the other hand, Howard notes, the assignment is an "excellent example of the kind that may be used in almost any subject at any grade to confirm a bit of learning. It takes only 10 minutes of class time; but for that length of time it relegates students to the solitude of their own minds, where they must sort out, then compose complete statements of understanding. It is a simple and convenient way to help students come to have ideas." Almost without exception, Howard says, the teachers in the project were enthusiastic, and most of them "are off and running with the idea of writing to learn." He points out that writing to learn is cheap. And his book is unusual, if not unique, in that the word computer never appears.
The use of writing to teach subjects other than English is the theme of a paperback (1) by James Howard of the Council for Basic Education in Washington, D.C. The idea behind "Writing To Learn" is that writing requires thinking; to write intelligibly, one must understand the subject. The book gives guidelines and related material on the pedagogical uses of writing, and it tells what happened to some teachers w h o tried the approach during the 198283 school year. The teachers were from 12 schools, public and private. They were participants in a project sponsored by CBE and supported by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. One group of teachers met at four one-day workshops at intervals of about three weeks; a second g r o u p had three day-and-a-half workshops at comparable intervals. Between workshops, Howard visited the classes of most of the teachers, and he stayed in touch with them after the project. After t h e first w o r k s h o p , t h e teachers began giving their students writing assignments, some quite short, others longer. Among the guidelines followed by the teachers w e r e these: Do t h e assignment yourself; insist that students write (1) "Writing To Learn," Council for complete sentences, using their own Basic Education, Washington, D.C. words; grade, don't correct, papers. 20006,1983, $5.95. At subsequent workshops the teachers presented their assignments and exemplary responses. At the last Flotsam and jetsam workshop they drafted plans for us- The bathtub vortex question (C&EN, Feb. 13, page 48) led Bob Gibson of ing writing regularly in one class. The teachers covered a wide range Aurora, 111., to express a wish that of subjects, and Howard gives repre- "some brainy individual" would ansentative assignments and responses. alyze the gravity/coriolis interacAn eighth-grade class in general tion at the north or south pole, science, for example, was given this where water does not run out of a assignment: In a few sentences, ex- tub at all. plain the difference between an inference and an observation. One Frank Tice of Wilmington, Del., student's response: "An inference is an interpetation says he heard a stock analyst disof an observation such as, if you cussing medical NMR explain that were riding your bike by a house the initials stand for Nuclear Mediand you saw a dog house in the cal Resonance. Apparently, says Tice, yard you would infer that there is a the patient flips when exposed to dog living in that house, but if you the cost of the procedure.
