Since 1999, STC's East Bay (California) chapter has supported a literacy outreach project to build technical writing skills in high-school students by bringing (suitably adapted) workplace writing activities into science classrooms. When the Chapter would share this approach at professional development sessions for in-service and pre-service teachers (many offered at the Edward Teller Education Center, a collaboration of UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), teachers often requested that they extend the examples to include science abstracts. The East Bay Chapter pleased to report that this has now happened.
Visit their page on the technical-literacy project website for background, tips, and templates to help students (or anyone else) “design effective abstracts.”
For an overview of all of the literacy-outreach resources shared on this site, click on the link.
If you're interested in contributing or have any questions, please contact T. R. Girill.