Make science an exhilarating process of discovery! Through a wealth of creative write-to-learn strategies, this book offers inspiring techniques to coax out the reluctant scientists in your classroom. Newly updated and expanded, this NSTA best seller is a storehouse of practical ideas and examples for use with students at all ability levels. It provides classroom-tested writing activities that you can:

• Introduce during the first week of class to build positive attitudes among students toward the subject of science, and toward you;
• Use at different stages in a learning unit and for quick review; and
• Adapt to help students write for different audiences, write to better understand the textbook, and write lab reports, research papers, and essay tests.

Added to this edition is a special section, “How Science Portfolio Assessment Can Improve Student Writing,” that describes ways portfolios help students focus on their work throughout the year, document science concepts they’ve mastered—or not—and serve as powerful assessment tools. There are many books about writing to learn, most authored by education or English professors who focus on theories of writing. This book is different—it’s full of classroom-tested, pragmatic approaches from high school science teachers who used the ideas to make teaching and learning more creative endeavors. The authors put their own good advice to work, writing in an appealing, personal style to convey teaching concepts and learning goals. As Bob Tierney says, expressive writing is “a vehicle for the exhilaration of discovery.”