What about writing?

Reading and writing go hand in hand!

“Mastery of content is not only demonstrated through reading but through writing." Integrating writing with reading enhances reading comprehension because the two are reciprocal processes.” Knipper and Duggan in “Writing to learn across the curriculum: tools for comprehension in content area classes” offer a repertoire of writing strategies that content area teachers can put into practice throughout the reading process to strengthen students' comprehension and extend their critical thinking. Such as learning logs, journals and fast writes. Writing to learn engages students, extends thinking, deepens understanding, and continues the meaning-making process.

Writing across the curriculum can bring about the positive results. By applying different writing strategies to the classroom situation students can become more engaged with the subject matter. They tend to understand the information and concepts more deeply, students can remember ideas longer and apply that learning in new situations. Teachers can use writing to prompt thinking, to facilitate discussions, to enhance concepts, to assess both formatively and summatively, and for reflection purposes. Some strategies include: “fast writes” which help students organize and state what they are thinking at the moment; “journals”, which either simple or complex, can also help in this area. Dialogue journals can be a great way to increase fluency in writing and work with the class content. “Learning logs” are similar in that they are done during class time and may not necessarily be graded.

The concept of writing to learn is indeed an important one. Through the use of the strategies by teachers, students who exhibit difficulty reading and writing can interact with expository text in a more meaningful way. Writing is just as important as reading!