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Article 1: Writing for different audiences: Effects on high-school students’ conceptual understanding of biology

This article was about students using writing to get a better grasp of the material. The article states that by making the writing authentic it makes students translate the information into more "basic" language to inform the intended audience about the topic. The students are learning which in this case the human nervous, respiratory, and circulatory system. In this study the students were separated into 4 small groups with one of the following audiences’ 3rd and 4th graders, parents, peers, and a control which used teachers as the audience. To show the difference in learning they used the first unit to see how each student did, they used writing strategies mentioned to get the students to translate the vocabulary they were using in class for their audience.

Article 2: More than writing to learn

This article is written by a science teacher who was just starting to use writing strategies to help students learn and understand the material better. While doing this he noticed that some students were still having trouble using only writing to explain their ideas. The teacher then decides to use something called bi-model writing tasks which are writing tasks with the use of graphs, figures, pictures, diagrams and other tools used in scientific community to express ideas and data. He then added these to his writing to learn strategies to see if understanding improved. This is done by forcing students to include them in their writing. But this does not come easy for most people so he uses examples and scaffolds with them and gets good results with this strategy.

Article 3: Learning to write and writing to learn

This article is about getting students to understand the material better by using argument based writing to allow students to use what they have learned to prove something right or wrong. The article states that by using a structured writing prompt and outline the students can use persuasive writing to make the knowledge their own and get a better understanding of the material. The example used is the article uses misconceptions about condensation. The teacher demonstrates condensation then asks the students what is happening. Then asks for ideas on what’s happening and ways to prove what is happening, thing the ideas are tested and data is collected. When the right hypothesis is found students create an argument and use data to support their argument.

Article 4: Using Technology to Support Expository Reading and Writing in Science Classes

This article is about an interesting writing strategy called the modified sentence completion task. The article explains that this task is broken up into three parts. The first is a standard fill in the blank exorcise to get the students focused on the vocabulary that they need to know. The second part is a paragraph that has been mixed up in both order and by adding irrelevant sentences. Their job is then to read the paragraph and pick out the correct sentences and put them in the correct order. This task can also be done using graphic organizers to help students organize the sentences that they find they need. Then using that paragraph they explain it using their own words to further help them understand the material.

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