Social Studies helps students hone their ability to communicate effectively in a democracy. Writing to demonstrate learning is important in providing students opportunities to communicate their conclusions at the end of the inquiry process. Disciplinary literacy in the Social Studies deepens student learning and empowers students to demonstrate their learning as though they are writing as political scientists, economist, geographers, and historians.  Building a culture of writing (Table 2), where students' ideas and abilities are celebrated, should be a central focus for Democratic Classrooms. Consider, for example, the types of published works within the Social Studies:

• History books

• Newspapers

• Laws

• Court documents

• Census data

• Policy and regulations

Writing is one of the most powerful ways to demonstrate student voice. To effectively communicate written conclusions students must be equipped with strong academic vocabulary, master reading comprehension, discuss, and practice writing. To effectively communicate written conclusions in a Democratic Classroom, students must also apply disciplinary literacy skills in addition to content literacy. Students need to write to improve their writing. Teachers should consider how to a) develop a culture of writing and b) scaffold writing across units and the year. Teachers need to strategically provide verbal and written feedback to help students reflect on how and why they're writing. The following tables show possible considerations for helping students write to demonstrate learning: 

• Table 4 shows specific performance tasks that help students write to demonstrate learning. Descriptions, generalizations, explanations, and claims help diversify specific ways students write to demonstrate their learning and help students practice communicating written conclusions. 

• Table 5 shows the criteria that teachers and students can use to provide feedback to improve writing. 

• Table 6 shows how to scaffold questions and tasks to build knowledge over a unit. Writing to demonstrate learning appears as scaffolded formative performance tasks that conclude inquiries. 

• Table 7 shows examples of using demonstrations of writing for mastery learning. Each criteria of JCPS's scaffolded, single point rubric correlates to standards that are bucketed. 

Before engaging in strategies the teacher should... 

• Establish high and clear expectations.

• Cultivate a culture of inquiry where students can learn new words without judgment.

• Plan deliberate writing process for writing with clear expectations.

• Use organizational tasks that help scaffold writing to learn to writing to demonstrate learning. 

• Provide structured space for writing feedback as a discussion.

• Use a rubric and the language of the rubric for feedback and assessment.

• Plan for writing conferences (individual or group).

• Prepare for next steps based on results of writing for future scaffolded instruction on writing.