Final Sample of Mentee's Written Work

This sample of my mentee's writing consists of a satirical cover letter that, based on the 5+1 writing traits rubric that I developed around a series of six levels, scored a "5" in ideas, a "5" in organization, a "5" in voice, a "5" in word choice, a "5" in sentence fluency, and a "5+" in conventions.

Reflections On Writing In My Subject Area

Though this professional learning blog has explored a variety of writing tasks, from poetry to narrative, that seek to allow students to develop their literacy skills as they familiarize themselves with subject-area content, I believe that my future practice will be biased towards the incorporation of more traditional writing assignments in the area of physics. In my view, it will prove difficult to convince students in the academic stream at the senior level, who are preparing to enter university and will likely be skeptical of the value more esoteric or non-traditional tasks, that poetry or narrative assignments are worthwhile. That said, if I find myself teaching science at the intermediate level, I believe that I will be able to explore the full range of writing tasks that are available to teachers who seek to foster literacy across the curriculum and enhance student learning through the use of such activities.

Instruction in my teachable subject of physics has stressed the value of lab quizzes and worksheets over formal lab reports at the senior level, given that the former two are completed in-class rather than at home or during one or more full class periods, but my exposure to a variety of different writing tasks in the Writing Across the Curriculum course has convinced me to employ all of the above-mentioned assessment options. While there are drawbacks to the traditional lab report, including production and marking time, the opportunity to foster student literacy through written introductions to such reports is a compelling justification for the inclusion of this assessment strategy in a senior-level physics course. In the case of lab activities that are to be assessed through formal reports, I will provide students with rubrics that include criteria based on compositional elements including adherence to the conventions of the English Language, structure, and clarity in addition to the usual assessment categories associated with the collection, manipulation, and reporting of data. The former will allow me to discuss writing skills and the important components of effective written work with students prior to, during, and after the submission of the written reports. I hope that this process will encourage students to internalize the skills and approaches that we discuss and to transfer them into other subject areas.

I see the value in developing writing tasks that encourage students to make connections between disciplines, guiding them to appreciate the interconnectedness of knowledge across the curriculum. Our responsibility as teachers is not simply to a particular subject, but to students and their evolution as whole learners and complete individuals. By establishing the natural links between multiple learning processes and subjects, I hope to equip and train students with the tools, skills, and views that enable them to approach real world issues from a variety of perspectives. Hopefully, given an education that recognizes the underlying links between fields, students will be able to examine complex and multifaceted problems in light of their multitude of contributing factors.

That said, in order for writing assignments to have advantageous long-term effects on student development, such activities must also have evident short-term benefits that encourage students to accept non-traditional learning processes as worthwhile and to continue to invest themselves. The writing tasks that I develop and implement should ideally allow students who are verbal-linguistic learners, rather than mathematical-logical, to appreciate subject area content in personally meaningful ways. By providing students with multiple modes to demonstrate their acquisition of knowledge while targeting and accommodating a variety of learning profiles through the conjunction of traditional and non-traditional tasks, I hope that I can encourage students to accept and to participate in the slightly unusual learning environment that I will seek to create.