Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Potential obstacles to implementing Recommendation 2 and the panel’s advice

Obstacle 2.1. Teaching writing and reading 

aren’t central to my discipline. I have too much 

content to teach already, and I don’t have time 

to develop students’ writing skills as well.

Panel’s advice. The panel is not recommend-

ing that disciplinary teachers specifically teach 

writing and reading, but that teachers incor-

porate writing and reading to further students’ 

learning of each skill. Many minor writing and 

reading activities and tasks can help focus stu-

dents’ learning, but they don’t require specific 

lessons on how to write or read.

Teachers in other disciplines can combine 

writing with reading to accomplish specific 

goals such as learning, remembering, and 

critical thinking. For example, teachers can 

encourage students to use writing to reflect 

on what they have read or learned. Students 

can keep a math or science journal to extend 

and reflect on their learning or respond to 

prompts such as “A discovery I made about 

the cell structure today is . . .” or “Another 

strategy I could have used to solve this 

problem is . . .” Asking students to read text 

(whether it be a newspaper article, passage 

on the internet, or textbook selection) and 

write about the key points will help students 

to learn and remember the major points of 

the text better.

Math teachers who are looking to incorpo-

rate reading and writing into their classes 

can have students use the logical reasoning 

inherent in writing to improve and verify their 

mathematical reasoning. One activity could 

include students writing an explanation of 

their problem-solving logic for an algebraic 

word problem. This allows them to check the 

soundness of their mathematical reasoning 

while writing.

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Collaborating with colleagues in professional 

learning communities or grade-level meet-

ings can help. For example, collect everything 

that a specific student was asked to write in 

a day the week before the meeting. Define 

writing broadly (e.g., answers to text book 

chapter questions, notes during a lecture or on 

a reading, explanation of thinking for a math 

problem, a science lab write up, a literary 

essay, etc.). Work with your colleagues during 

the meeting to identify whether and how each 

writing assignment 1) supported the student in 

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