Greenhills teachers publish academic paper on writing across curricula

The ability to communicate across disciplines, both verbally and in writing, has never been more important. That’s why four Greenhills middle school teachers who teach those skills in various disciplines collaborated on a peer-reviewed paper on the topic, published in the academic journal Science Scope.

The authors — science teacher Ann Novak, English teacher Peggy Hubbard, English and forensics teacher Barb Ebeling, and former history teacher Bridget Maher — published “Explanations across curricula: Integrating Common Core State Standards in literacy with the Next Generation Science Standards” in the April/May issue of the journal, published by the National Science Teachers Association to support middle school educators.

The teachers who wrote  the article were uniquely positioned to report on the process for their peers: Greenhills works hard to make sure middle school students use a consistent framework throughout the curriculum to discuss, both orally and in writing, concepts in science, literature, history, and other disciplines.

“Whether it’s a scientific explanation, a persuasive speech, or an analytical essay, variations on a claim, evidence, and reasoning framework can assist students in making deeper connections between ideas and becoming more effective oral and written communicators,” Novak said. “Our seventh grade students write explanations across the curriculum, so we wanted to share our work with other middle school teachers. ”

The complete article is available at www.greenhillsschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ScienceScope2016Explanations.pdf.