Students trace a development process that began with answering questions, continued with rapid iterations of potential solutions to design problems, and culminated in the Nobel-prize-winning, health-care- transforming medication. Then they organize what they have learned into a succinct but engaging explanation of how the breakthrough developed. Throughout, instruction is structured to develop skills from the "Menu-Module with NGSS Skills," emphasizing reading and writing for understanding the distinctive disciplinary practices of science and engineering.
The writing product uses the Smithsonian Tween Tribune as a source of examples and organizational expectations. As a result, students work on a distinctively informational way to constructing their piece, being sure to identify the main topic early on, but providing little or no other "here's what I'm going to say" overview of the piece before jumping in. That follows the distinctive way Common Core Writing Standard 2 calls for students to "write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content." In that statement, there is no specification of a single right way to begin a piece. It's different from argumentation, where a claim is the essential starting point and the rest of the piece is judged by how well it backs up that claim. In informational/expanatory, what matters is choosing some effective way to organize the pieces, but there can be many options. Trying out this journalistic organization introduces one real-world approach, and it also introduces the idea that there are multiple alternatives to the classic essay and the thesis-first course- assignment writing most valued in English and history classes.
