If you’re an ELA teacher, it’s very important to incorporate cross-curricular writing when planning assignments! Luckily, this is extremely easy to do, as writing lends itself to involving all subject areas.
These cross-curricular writing strategies will work in your upper elementary/middle school classroom to lead kids to interdisciplinary success!
If you’re self-contained or don’t teach writing, but looking to incorporate writing into other subject areas, check out this post or my post about writing in math!
Strategies for Cross-Curricular Writing
Research Essays
To begin, writing essays based on factual information is a great way to incorporate different subject areas. When students are researching, there’s a good chance that the subject is on something that has to do with science or social studies!
Here are some examples…
Persuasive
A persuasive essay requires students to try to convince the reader to agree with them. Students must form an opinion about something and use evidence to prove themselves. This type of essay is easy to find topics on from science, social studies, and even math.
- Math: Students could write an essay on which process is best, or most useful, since there are different ways to solve math problems.
- Science: Many scientific topics lend themselves to writing, such as which animals are more dangerous or whether or not global warming is real!
- Social studies: Along with the other subject areas, social studies concepts make great topics for persuasive essays! Modern day issues or events in history, such as whether or not the European colonists were in the right to take Native American land, make excellent essays.
Informative
Informative/explanatory essays do not have a purpose of swaying the reader; their purpose is simply to inform. Students could explain a math process, inform the reader about a historical event, or write a report about a type of animal in science.
If you’re interested in some examples, check out my well-loved animal research projects! Students always LOVE having their own animal to research and write about.
Collaborate with coworkers (or yourself)
Before the school year began I used to meet the social studies teacher to plan lessons. I would try to align some of my Language Arts/Reading lessons to what he was doing in social studies! It worked out very well, actually!
Around November, when he was teaching about early America and the First Thanksgiving, I would have students write a research project about the different Native American tribes in Ohio.
I would also collaborate with the science teachers: one year I had students write a report on the different types of rocks.
Aligning your assignments with what other teachers are working on is a great way for students to see how each class matters and how skills can be combined and work together!
Narratives
One of my FAVORITE reading skills to teach is point of view (POV). I believe that this skill is extremely important for analyzing texts and for real life; it helps students with emotional intelligence, and to think critically about the sources they’re reading. Are they biased? Are they true?
It is beneficial to look at different perspectives of history, for example. Like stated about, the Native Americans viewed the First Thanksgiving differently than the colonists. Students could write narratives from each POV.
Science concepts work, as well! How fun would it be for students to write a story from the POV of a water molecule going through the water cycle? Make sure students focus on facts, but let them get creative!
Check out my POV freebie for kids to practice this skill and write a narrative!
Be creative
On that note, you can be creative, too! Almost any story you read can be applied to a different subject area.
We read Mr. Popper’s Penguins each year. Mr. Popper is quite obsessed with studying the arctic and antarctic. Can you guess what we did while reading the novel?
Yep! We studied arctic animals and wrote an informative essay.
Before diving into different concepts, stories, or texts, brainstorm how you could connect these to another subject area and get kids writing about it!
Do you have any other ideas for getting students to write about all subject areas? Let me know in the comments!
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