Teaching In The Margins:
Commenting On Student Writing

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Judy Hannah from Geosciences notes that not all the writing assignments she gives mimic professional writing in her field. Rather, she uses a range of assignments to give students practice with necessary skills:

• She assigns a field report in which the description must be precise; students need to lay out facts and then build a case for a particular action or interpretation.

• She also asks students to write a film critique to help them separate fact from interpretation and fiction.

• She also asks students to write about how geologists predict volcanic eruptions.

She's careful to spell out the key criteria for each kind of writing assignment on the assignment sheet so that students can see precisely what to concentrate on.