Writing Revolution Activities in Primary Science
This blog is part 4 of the #WritingInScience symposium curated by Pritesh Raichura. Read Pritesh’s introduction here , part 2 from Ben Rogers here and part 3 from Ruth Walker here.
The Writing Revolution by Hochmann and Wexler focuses on the need to improve writing at sentence level. In my opinion, primary writing has had too great a focus on writing as self-expression, communication and an outlet for creativity. This has relegated the teaching of writing good quality subject specific non-fiction writing and writing as a means of communication.
My previous experience of teaching writing in science usually involved the following:
- a divorced exercise, where writing would take place in a generic non-fiction unit such as explanations,
- asking children to write up experiments they had had to think up for a phenomenon they knew very little about,
- or asking children to write explanations for phenomena they had been given time to discover for themselves.
There are many reasons why writing in primary science was less than satisfactory, the lack of focus on core knowledge and cognitive load being the primary culprits.
Over the course of the Summer 2018 term, I have taught a systematic knowledge-rich curriculum and trialled some of the activities from the Writing Revolution. Below is a set of do’s and don’ts for using specific activities.
| General Do’s | General Don’ts |
| Follow the guidance in the book! | Adapt the activities until you have worked through similar examples in the book. |
| Coordinate the activities you use across the different subjects you are teaching. | Shoehorn the content into a particular activity as it simply adds to the cognitive load experienced by pupils. |
Sentence or Fragment?
As Hochman and Wexler outline on page 26, we need to support children to understand in concrete terms the abstract concept of what a sentence is. By distinguishing between complete sentences (Carl Linnaeus invented a system of classification) and fragments (invented a system of) pupils start to understand the concept of a complete sentence, discern sentence boundaries and practice close reading of sentences.
The activity involves giving children sentences and fragments in a list. Complete sentences should not be punctuated. Pupils decide which are complete sentences (which they then punctuate correctly) and which are fragments (which they rewrite).
| Sentence or Fragment Do’s | Sentence or Fragment Don’ts |
| Gradually build up the number of sentences. I started off with seven and reduced it before building back up again. | Insist they rewrite all the sentences and write the paragraph out as a whole. |
| Ensure that the fragment relates to a definition or knowledge they have repeatedly encountered in a lesson. | Ask children to find the full sentence in something they have read. This slows down the process. Better to verbally discuss the sentence as a class and rewrite it. |
Find the Fragment?
This is based on the same principle as the sentence or fragment activity but pupils are given complete sentences and fragments in a paragraph with punctuation for both. This more closely resembles the writing of pupils who rush when they are writing so the information is there but not all in well-constructed sentences.
| Find the Fragment Do’s | Find the Fragment Don’ts |
| Ensure that children are secure in sentence or fragment activity. | Expect children to work on creating their own sentences independently to begin with. Depending on their age and understanding of the content you may need to scaffold from whole class to paired work to independent over a period of time. |
| Start off with a small paragraph with fewer fragments and adjust the number of fragments to whole sentences. |
Unscrambling Scrambled Sentences
This is a word order activity primarily which reinforces that all-important, yet abstract and difficult to explain, concept of a sentence that makes sense. I have given children activities like this before but underestimated the extent to which secure subject knowledge underpins the ability to ascertain word order.
| Unscrambling Scrambled Sentences Do’s | Unscrambling Scrambled Sentences Don’ts |
| Introduce the activity with short sentences to ensure success. | Skip Level 1! I made this mistake and realised that while learning the activity pupils do need to know which word they need to start with. This is particularly the case when they encounter longer sentences which contain several plausible first words for a sentence. |
| Build up the number of sentences they unscramble. | Ask children to unscramble sentences which then involve adding punctuation in ways you have not taught them to previously. They should cover this in a separate GPS lesson first and then apply it. |
| Ensure that you have the correct unscrambled sentences written out. It is too easy to change one’s mind about the sentence construction but not omit/add words. By copying and pasting the scrambled sentence and rearranging it you can check the sentence and have a resource by which the children can check their own unscrambled sentences against. |
I have found that I needed to hold my nerve and give children the space to learn how to write good quality subject specific sentences without pushing them towards paragraphs or to write within a particular genre framework. The drive to push children to write independently without scaffolds is a hangover from my previous teaching experiences. It is good to remember that pupils are simply reinforcing and practising poor writing habits if they are not secure sentence writers. The key to success in their science (and all writing) is to add and remove scaffolds, assess the impact and feed this into future writing tasks so that they can become confident and secure writers in the long term.
Writing in Science: A Symposium | Bunsen Blue
November 7, 2018 @ 11:29 pm
[…] Gill discusses strategies she uses to develop her pupils’ writing in primary […]
Writing in Science: Guest post by Hochman and Wexler | Bunsen Blue
December 5, 2018 @ 6:29 pm
[…] organization by the same name—are as much a method of teaching content as of teaching writing. As Tarjinder Gill observes in her blog, too often students at the primary or elementary level have been asked to write […]