Adding Voice to Content-Area Writing

Writer voice shouldn’t be absent from content-area or nonfiction writing, although it often is. To encourage a more descriptive and engaging lead from her students, Claudia Jackson shared a writing sample from Ralph Fletcher’s Teaching the Qualities of Writing.

The class discussed how the descriptive lead sounded like fiction, despite the abundance of facts and information about dolphins. The students all raved that there was strong reader interest.

Claudia then transitioned this idea to her students’ writing in science. They quickly reviewed all they had recently learned about the digestive system. Using the science information, Claudia challenged her students to think about something they would/wouldn’t want to eat and then explain the digestive process of that food item using a more descriptive lead.