Draft outline for Writing Talk (Invited Panel for Summer 09 AAPT)

Using Guiding Questions and Rubrics to Improve Students' Scientific Writing

• Drew's project and results about rubrics.
• Notes from text
  • Does learning how to organize one's reading teach one about writing? Emily's literacy stuff
  • outlining is linear, concept maps are not linear–how do students learn to output linearly?
  • 4th grade vs 7th grade vs college
• Scaffolding writing assignments
  • Lots of small assignments
  • Lots of practice
  • You can't write science well until you can write a single sentence
  • Exit interview–Drew's stuff–NOT a lab report with set-up and experiment.
    • “When you write about something, you figure out whether you know it or not”. “It teached (sic) us to write in a physics context.”
• Sensemaking–require every student to do sensemaking for every homework problem. Dimensions (vs. units), limiting case, tell me what yo learned.
• What is reflection? How do we teach it? Relationship to metacognition.
  • How do you know when you know?
    • Students say that listening to lecture is not enough (Liz)
    • Students say that you need to solve problems (Liz)
    • Students can't answer why solving problems helps (Liz)
  • Barbara-settling
  • Us as professionals (do other problems/permutations)
  • Three questions at the end of class
    • Something you learned
    • Something that still confuses you
    • Something you would like to know more about
  • Question at the end of each homework question
    • Tell me something that you learned by doing this problem that you would like to remember.
• Phases of the moon quotes.