Making Writing Meaningful in Science Education

INTRODUCTION:
One of the challenges that I have run into as a science educator is having kids understand the
importance of writing in their secondary science classrooms. Often times I give a free-response
question, where I tell the students to write in complete sentences and provide as much knowledge
as they can. Frustratingly, many kids fail to provide more than a couple of words, despite the fact
the directions say to write paragraphs or complete sentences.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The image below was utilized during a Pre-AP Biology test on Evidence for Evolution. When
asked the question, What is the highlighted structure AND how does it show evidence for
evolution? I would receive a bevy of responses. Most of these responses would not be correct.
Some samples of responses Ive received are:
1. Vestigial structure (Not a complete sentence)
2. Hip bone (Not a complete sentence)
3. Thats a structure that once had a function (Doesnt identify vestigial as the type of structure)

What would a student need to receive credit for this response? Claire P., a student in my
freshman-level Pre-AP Biology class during 2015-2016, gave the following response:
The highlighted structure in the image above is known as a vestigial structure. This type
of structure once had a function in the animal but through evolutionary processes like
natural selection and use/disuse, the need for that structure was lost. This vestigial
structure, a hip bone, provides evidence for evolution in that it proves that current day
whales are descended from animals that had legs. Thus, we can infer from this evidence
that modern day whales are descended from mammals that walked on land.

Claire knocked it out of the park! She provided meaningful writing, gave background
information on the evolutionary history of whales, and connected the type of structure with the
proof it provides for evolution. But look at the 3 responses above the picture. Notice that none of
the responses identified both necessary components needed to obtain credit for the question.
So what is the source for this misunderstanding? Are many of our students glossing over
important details in the question itself and missing the AND portion? Do we not expect
enough of our students from day one? Do we provide our students ample opportunity during the
course of the year to write meaningfully in science, thus reducing their frustration when the
summative assessment comes around? Do our students just not care enough to put forth the effort
to write meaningfully?
If I were to approach a group of students and ask them if they enjoy writing, I would expect a
multitude of responses, most of which would be, NO. Many of them would say, I dont know
what to write about. Or they would include, Im not a great writer, so why bother? Often
times Im asked, why do I need to write in science? Responses like these leave me
exasperated. Im sure that these same sentiments are found throughout curriculum disciplines in
my school. So what can I do as a science educator to help foster an environment where my
students feel successful in their writing?
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
To gauge student interest in writing, I conducted a four-question survey of fourteen to eighteen
year olds at Byron Nelson High School in Trophy Club, Texas. Requests were sent out to each
science department teacher. Additionally, requests were sent to the Academy of Biomedical
Sciences instructors. Data was collected via an application called Socrative. Item analysis was
conducted from the material collected via the application and Microsoft Excel. Students were
asked, Do you like writing as a yes or no question. Follow on questions were composed of five
responses, including, Not at all, A little, Some, A Lot, and A whole lot. Follow on questions
were:
Writing is boring
I like to write in my spare time
I wish I had more time to write during class
RESULTS:
A total of 391 students responded to my request to complete the four-question survey on writing
habits in Science classes. With a 95% confidence level and a margin of error of 4.9%, I found
that when asked, Do you like writing, 47% of high school aged students responded that they do
like writing. Of the 47% that responded yes, 31% said writing is not at all boring. 43% said
writing is a little boring. 26% said that writing is somewhat boring. No responses were recorded
for A lot or A whole lot. 13% of Yes responses responded that they like to write in their
spare time, with 57% responding either A little or Not at all. Only 30% of students
responded with Some or A lot when asked this question.16% of responses were Not at all
when asked if they wished for more time to write during school class periods. 21% said a little,
with 38% of respondents saying Some and only 23% responding A lot or A whole lot.

Not surprisingly, these results are vastly different when students responded NO to writing. Of
the 53% of students that responded no, only 1% said that writing wasnt boring, with 19% saying
A little boring, 38% saying somewhat boring, and 42% saying either A lot or A whole lot.
74% of no respondents do not like to write in their spare time, with only 11% responding either
Some, A lot, or A whole lot. 77% of these students do not wish for more time to write in
school, 14% want a little more time and only 9% want Some, A lot, or A whole lot more
time to write during class.
For those responding NO to the question, Do You Like to Write?

For those responding YES to the question, Do You Like to Write?

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN:

As frustrating as these results may be, students need to be aware that good writing, especially in
science, is dependent on certain conditions. Students need to have the content background
necessary to produce meaningful writing. But what do we do when our students are too
distracted by their mobile phones and technology devices. The allure of Snapchat or Instagram is
too great for many of these students. They feel like theyll miss something important outside of
the classroom if they do not have their mobile phone, so instead they miss important details
inside the classroom. Couple this with the many demands placed on teachers in our current highstrung testing environment and you create an environment where its difficult to effectively
write. Often in our testing focused classrooms, we lose sight of the fact that our journey from
introduction of material to testing day should incorporate time spent writing and making
reflections on our learning. This is no doubt tough in a 45 minute class period. We are expected
to provide a hook opening, introduce content and/or complete necessary labs, and finish the
class with an exit ticket to ensure that our students are learning and the full 45 minute period is
spent with students engage in higher-level thinking.
The very first thing that we can do is eliminate classroom distractions that reduce student
learning. In our hyper-connected, technology based world, students are often easily distracted by
the buzz or ding of their cell phone. While these devices offer immediate access to information,
they unnecessarily distract students during content presentations, lectures, and other class
activities. Recent research shows that students who use cell phones during class take 62% less
notes, have less detailed notes, and remember less about important details. This correlates to a 15
point LOWER score on multiple choice tests than students who did not use a technology device
during the course of the lesson (Kuznekoff and Titsworth, 2013).
As educators, we MUST make a choice. If we want our students to learn meaningful content and
to communicate effectively in science, we must decide whether the use of the technology device
in the classroom truly benefits our students. I would hypothesize that if we followed state testing
protocol for cell phones during regular class periods, we would see less distractions and more
meaningful learning occurring. Students absolutely need to put pen to paper in order to facilitate
the higher-level thinking our academics demand. The same research mentioned above shows that
even students using laptops to take notes miss important details and fail to recall important
information and score lower on assessments than students who do not use such devices.

Secondly, from day one we have to foster an environment where students are expected to write
meaningful content. This would involve communicating from day one that students are expected
to write in science. Thus, teachers would need to follow through and hold their students
accountable for writing meaningful content. The first week of school typically involves passing
out a syllabus, setting up notebooks, and making introductions.
But what if we took that time and flipped it? What if we introduced writing prompts from day
ONE and had our kids writing from the get-go? I would reason that we would see students begin
to develop an appreciation for writing and we would begin developing the skills necessary to
write meaningful science content later in the year. Grading writing isnt easy as it is extremely
time-consuming. But if we are to nurture the development of future science communicators, we
must put forth the effort as the educator to further our students abilities to communicate
effectively.
As part of that effort, if we expect our students to create meaningful content, we must develop
aligned assignments with that instructional goal in mind. It is very easy to say we want you to
write. It is much more difficult to align the curriculum with that goal in mind. College Board,
the curator of the Advanced and Pre-Advanced Placement program, has a bevy of resources
available to educators. Free-response questions dating back to 1999 are available on the site. If
educators spent a little time aggregating questions by topic, a question bank of free-response
writing prompts would begin to take shape. Yes, these responses would be geared more toward
the advanced student. But with a little bit of alignment to pre-advanced curriculum, teachers
could modify the questions for the appropriate age group.
Additionally, students would be much more likely to respond to questions that have meaning to
them. Jenna Anderson, a fifth grade ELA teacher in the Keller Independent School District said,
If you let kids write about themselves, it has meaning. If you let them connect the topic to
something in their life, itll have meaning. If we allow students the opportunity to free-write,
albeit related to the classroom topic, we foster the freedom for our students to develop
independent thought.
Fourth, we must provide continual writing instruction, to include feedback, in the secondary
science classroom. In my second year of teaching, I was given the assignment to teach FIVE
sections of Advanced Placement Biology. I worried considerably about my scope and sequence
and how I would be able to navigate the curriculum. When the school year began, I informed my
students that their summative assessments would be 50% multiple choice and 50%. After the first
summative---Biomolecules---it was evident that I had not properly prepared my students for the
rigor of the AP free response. So what did I do? I incorporated what I termed Free-Response
Friday into my curriculum.
Free-Response Friday was a bi-weekly writing assessment based on material covered in class
lecture and lab. They were released AP questions from the College Board site. Based on the
type of question that was given, students were afforded ten, twenty, or twenty-five minutes to
plan their response and respond. With 138 students in my AP course, it would be a grading
nightmare for me to provide meaningful science feedback on so many student papers on a biweekly basis. The compromise became what we termed calibrated peer grading. Students passed
their papers to three different students and we went over the AP scoring rubric as a class.

Often times, it was black or white whether the student received credit for the response. But in
those times where black and white diverged to shades of grey, I was available to provide
feedback. This facilitated classroom discussion. By being exposed to the writing style of others
and receiving meaningful feedback from their peers, students confidence in their science writing
grew during the year. As a result, I saw an increased propensity to write more content-based
responses. Scores increased throughout the year for both multiple choice and free response
assessments. I would offer that scores on the national exam will show an improvement, as well.
Lastly, all of this would be for naught if we do not develop our students analytical capacity to
decipher data from the laboratory. The 2016 AP Biology free response questions were very
focused on data analysis. Many of my students expressed dismay that Biology wasnt on the
test. What they meant by this was that the lower-level recall information was not tested. Instead,
College Board tested their ability to analytically decipher information and analyze the result of
experiments. While I believe that my students will do well when scores are released, we must
foster the development of the analytical skills necessary so that students are less shocked by what
they see and believe they do not know how to tackle.
We must re-focus our efforts to inform students that true learning goes beyond the typical rotememory recall of facts and information. If we focus our efforts and develop the classroom time
necessary to incorporate written responses into our curriculum, we will see students capable of
articulating their ideas with the production of clear, concise, and well-structured writing.