Elementary Students' Strategies for Writing-to-Learn in Science

Previous research has shown that writing can contribute to learning, but few studies have examined the cognitive processes through which this occurs, particularly among elementary students. A total of 70 children in Grades 4, 6, and 8 carried out science ex-periments concerning buoyancy or the balance beam, stated their explanations of the phenomena, and then wrote journal-style notes while thinking aloud. Fifteen of the students constructed more complex explanations during writing. Four aspects of the data were analyzed: writing operations, transitional sequences among writing opera-tions, text features, and strategies for generating content. An analysis of these data