Writing Across the Curriculum: It doesn't have to be the domain of language arts, ya know?

Writing Across the Curriculum: We Can All be Writing Teachers

Whether we want to admit it or not, writing is still the basis of communication for almost all core academic subjects.  Today many teachers (and many of those who came before us) have done incredible work to create innovative projects that allow students to demonstrate learning using different media (think video, podcasts, book talks, pecha kucha), but they all have a basis in written communication.  A video project without a script is pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster.  An off the cuff pecha kucha will put an audience to sleep.

Then of course there are all those essays, lab reports, stories, blog posts, explanations of solutions to math problems, and exams; each one has a legitimate place in the student toolbox as they learn to communicate ideas, information and opinions.  And they all depend on the ability to write.  Even for those who dictate their work, it’s still writing - there’s just a device ‘hitting’ the keys instead of human fingers on a keyboard.

Writing instruction, however, remains primarily the domain of the Language Arts teacher (and occasionally the Social Studies teacher).  It’s not just the commas, periods and semicolons, but the organisation of ideas, the clarity of expression, and the use of language that fall, in most cases, to Language Arts.  The better students write, however, the more successful they will be in all subject areas.  Plus, imagine how much happier the science teachers will be with coherent lab reports that follow a solid organisational plan.  Or the math teachers who can actually make sense of the steps students describe in their explanations of problem solving.

So how do we make the teaching of writing a shared endeavour?  

• Share those rubrics!  We language arts teachers can start by sharing our writing rubrics with our colleagues in other departments.  Imagine the science teachers deciding to take just one column of a language arts rubric (say, writing organisation) and adding it to their lab report rubrics.  The teachers get a ready-made tool for assessing the skill, and students get reinforcement of a skill they are developing in another class.  
• Suggested tools: Google Drive is a super simple, free way of sharing rubrics between courses and teachers.  You can make them “View only’ if you want to and your colleagues can make a (digital) copy.  They can then use and edit that copy, perhaps by just copying a column (e.g. Language) to their own rubrics for something like a lab report.
• Invite teachers from other departments to anchoring sessions.  At our school we start and finish each year with a common writing assessment to determine individual and group writing needs.  Why should that meeting be open only to Language Arts teachers?  Bring in reps from other departments and have them weigh in on what our collective goals should be.  It gives them a voice and stake in writing instruction.  Perhaps most importantly, it reinforces the idea that writing is a team effort.
• Suggested digital tools: For this one, nothing beats a face-to-face meeting.  It’s the discussion that counts.  Sorry.
• Design some units that have crossover.  Maybe we’re emphasising sentence structure or language clarity in Language Arts.  Science teachers could work on lab reports in class, and we could use time in Language Arts to apply what we have been working on to peer edit them.  Or take an example like writing conventions.  In middle school, we often work towards building sentence sophistication.  Let’s say we do a mini-lesson on compound sentences (e.g. I multiplied the speed (42 km/hr) times the time (45 minutes or .75 hours), and the result was 31.5 km), and we share that with our fabulous math colleagues.  They could ask for and expect students to incorporate them into their problem solving explanations.
• Suggested digital tools: Google Drive could work for this to share ideas and resources, but if you really want to move towards integrated units, try creating an integrated digital space for your course or unit.  If your school is willing to pay for it, you could go with a Learning Management System (LMS) bursting with features like Haiku.  Haiku allows multiple teachers and student rosters and comes with built in discussion functions, dropbox space, and assessment tools (quizzes and grading).  Free alternatives include: Coursesites by Blackboard, edmodo, EasyClass, or Wikispaces.
• Writing celebrations and/or contests  Invite the other departments to write, share and judge.  It sends a huge message that the school culture embraces writing.
• Suggested digital tools: You could use any of the above (Coursesites by Blackboard, edmodo, EasyClass, Google Drive or Wikispaces) to take submissions, create polls/nominations, or collect comments on writing pieces. Invite parents to view as well.   For the writing celebration itself, try digital slideshows running during the day showcasing particularly elegant turns of phrase or short excerpts of bold prose running throughout the day in your library.  Consider author or reader interviews (with students) in iMovie running on your playlist in YouTube in the cafeteria or office.  
• Design integrated units that culminate in multi-disciplinary projects.  It was always a dream at our school to take one of our Humanities units (like Adaptation) and tie it into math and science.  We already looked at Adaptation from a social studies perspective and intertwined it with personal narrative writing and literature.  Why not take science (plant adaptations under different growing conditions, for example) and math (calculating growth rates given different variables) and weave those in as well?  The final result would be a multi-disciplinary project with instruction and assessment from all teachers involved.  
• Suggested digital tools: This one is ripe with possibility.  Think of something where students can combine writing, video, images, and graphics (just as examples).  In one day, students could write in Science, screencast in Math, present in English, and film in Social Studies.  Something like Google Sites would allow them to then combine all the elements of their multi-disciplinary projects in one place viewable by peers and teams of teachers.

These are, for the most part, baby steps towards integrating writing instruction and only intended as ideas.  When everyone teaches writing, everyone wins.