Just Ideas! (for science and mathematics)

Brief Description

Short, frequent writing assignments designed to add variety to classwork, and to encourage students to think with inventiveness.

Objective

To give students experience in expanding ideas, synthesizing information, and using their imaginations.

Procedure

1. Extinct No More

Tap your students’ knowledge of issues concerning endangered species by having them write a brief account of the rediscovery of an animal once considered extinct. Or, you can have your students write an obituary of an endangered species.

2. Blast Off!

Encourage your students to weigh the risks and rewards of space flight by having them explain in writing why they would or would not like to be a passenger on the Space Shuttle. Or, have them describe an experiment to be conducted on board the Shuttle.

3. For Sale

Inform your students that a tract of land is being sold in your community. Fictitious bidders include the National Park Service, a children’s hospital, a shopping-mall developer, an oil drilling company, and the U.S. Armed Forces. Have each student become a lobbyist for one of these, and have them write arguments on behalf of their interests.

4. How do you use it?

Assist your students in learning how to use laboratory equipment by having them choose a scientific instrument from your lab, and write directions on how to use it.

5. Questions Up Front

You and your students write down as many questions about a new unit of instruction as you can BEFORE the unit begins.

6. Identification

Have your students picture themselves as part of a scientific phenomenon, and write about the experience. Examples of phenomenon include respiration, blood flow, transmission of nerve signals, chemical reactions, heat transfer, lightning, combustion, and propagation of radio waves.

7. New Space in Outer Space

Have your students make up a new planet. Have them describe important features of the landscape, what the climate is like, and what lives there. They might write from the viewpoint of the first visitor to this planet.

8. Oh, No!

Your students can grapple with issues concerning form and function by writing about how the world would be different if cockroaches were the size of poodles (or other such distortions of scale and size).

9. Turning the Tables

Have your students rewrite a section of their science text so that a third grader could understand it.

10. It’s Their Turn

Have the students themselves come up with a writing activity for the class.

Results

Students get a chance to use their imagination; they sharpen their language skills in a science class.