Interdisciplinary writing is extremely important to incorporate into your Language Arts classroom; this is especially true in upper elementary! At a young age, students need to learn that writing skills are needed in almost everything they do… even Math!
The great thing about Reading and ELA is how easy it is to create cross-curricular content! These subjects lend themselves to interdisciplinary writing and instruction!
For example, it is easy to find informative or persuasive reading passages based on concepts from Social Studies or Science! You can easily think of essay/writing prompts to go a
Here are a few ways to incorporate different subjects into your writing curriculum!
Project-Based Learning
Some consider PBLs a buzz word, but they are very beneficial for students to use skills from different areas for one assignment.
Most PBLs have an interdisciplinary focus and include all main subject areas! Students love them and they are highly engaging. It also allows you to synthesize all of the concepts that students are working on in all areas of school!
The Tarheel State Teacher has an excellent blog post about PBLs if you would like to learn more!
Here are some examples of PBLs:
Interdisciplinary Writing Journals
Another easy way to incorporate interdisciplinary writing is to have students keep a journal about what they’ve learned each day. This also makes for an excellent formative assessment!
Students can write a paragraph each day about a concept they learned in a chosen subject area. This will not only help reinforce their understanding of the material, but it will require writing skills to communicate their new-found knowledge.
For example, students learning about the types of rocks in Science could write a paragraph explaining the types of rocks or why it’s important to know geology!
If you’re looking for a simple and easy daily writing journal, check out my freebie that you can get by joining the Chlover Club!
Essential Questions
Every subject area usually has essential questions. A great way to add writing to the lesson is to have students write a paragraph about how the information from the day applies to the essential question!
Many times the entire unit has an essential question and then smaller essential questions for each day. Any of these would be appropriate to have students write about, no matter the subject area!
In Social Studies, an essential question may be: “How can I make a difference in my community?”
If students learned about volunteering that day, for example, they could answer the essential question using information about how to become a volunteer.
Reflection Sheets
Similar to daily journals, reflection sheets make a great way to add writing to the mix! Students simply reflect on their day for whichever subject area is in the spotlight. If you plan on doing this, make sure they still answer in complete sentences!
Not only would it help their writing skills, but self reflection is always a great way to assist students in assessing learning. It’s also a nice formative assessment for you!
Here are some examples of what might be on a reflection sheet:
- What did I do well today?
- What was challenging for me?
- What will I try next time?
- How do I know my work is high-quality?
- What questions do I still have?
For younger students, you could use sentence starters instead:
- One thing I did well today was…
- One thing that challenged me today was…
- Next time, I will try to…
- I know my work is high-quality because…
- The questions that I still have are…
I have provided a free download of simple templates you can use for reflection journals! Click the picture or click here to get it. They are usable for any subject area!
How-To
Especially for Science, the other subject areas easily allow for “how-to” writing tasks. Students can explain how to do something after learning the concept!
For example, students can write about how to multiply, how to perform a science experiment, or how settlers built log cabins back in the day! If you’re looking for more ways to use writing strategies in math, check out this post!
Not only does this reinforce information, but it leads students to think critically and be able to teach someone else what they learned.
Point-of-View (POV) Narratives
One of my favorite reading skills is POV! I think that it is one of the most important standards that kids need to learn, as it easily lends itself to
Writing a short story or narrative from another POV is a great way to get some writing in! If you’re teaching The First Thanksgiving in Social Studies, have students write a narrative from the Native Americans’ POV. This is a very eye-opening activity!
In science, for example, students could write a story about the water cycle from the POV of a water molecule.
Not only do these ideas help students practice their narrative writing skills, but it helps them deal dive deeper with the subject area’s material.
If you’re looking for a good example, check out my Arctic Animal POV freebie!
Explain the Error
Explaining the error in interdisciplinary writing is perfect for Math and Science!
For Math, students can evaluate where someone went wrong in a math problem. They will have to explain which step was missed or why the person got a wrong answer.
For Science, the same concept could be applied, but for a science experiment or the scientific method.
Acronyms to answer questions thoroughly
You may have heard of the acronyms “RAP,” or “RACE” to help students thoroughly answer questions. The great thing about these acronyms is that they can be used in any subject!
When students must complete a short answer questions, these acronyms can help build their writing skills. There are many that exist, but these are two that are common and easy to remember:
RACE: Restate the question, Answer the question, Cite textual Evidence, and Explain your answer!
RAP: Restate the question, Answer the question, Prove your answer with textual evidence!
Both of these acronyms help students fully and completely answer a short answer question with a paragraph.
Poems about the main idea
A fun way to get students writing is to assign them a poem! Students can summarize the main idea of a lesson with a poem in any subject area. This can be any type of poem, but you may have to teach your students how to write one before taking this strategy on.
Do you have any other ways that you use interdisciplinary writing? Tell me in the comments below!
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