Writing in Science

CPD: Literacy in Science for Teachers (by Amanda Fleck), topic 4.1.1

Reading in Science is important, but so is writing in Science.

According to Cameron (2003), there are barriers to writing well in Science:
At the word level, students' writing lacks a range of vocabulary including scientific terms.
At the sentence level, students writing lacks detail, many find it a challenge to express their ideas clearly.
At the text level, students are not clear about the different text types used in science.
Students often fail to structure and organise their writing.
Legibility, spelling, punctuation, and grammar can also be barriers.

Speech production and perception systems used to be viewed as being functionally distinct but are now seen as being strongly interconnected.
The ‘dual stream model’ is probably the predominant explanation.
This model suggests that students articulate a concept verbally to gain a deeper understanding of what they are learning prior to writing this down.

For Carrier, 2011, teachers need to explicitly model the correct use of science-specific language.
Student: “We put this smooth powder in the bag along with the crunchy powder and the bag blew up and got hot.”
Teacher: “We mixed baking soda and calcium chloride with water resulting in a gas, and the heat was released.”
Scientist: “The combination of baking soda and calcium chloride is an exothermic reaction with the products of sodium chloride, calcium carbonate, and carbon dioxide.”

Well done!

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