Incorporating the Writing Lessons for Engineering and Science
​into Your Course

Introduction

​This page presents lesson plans to incorporate the writing lessons for engineering and science into your laboratory, design, or writing course. In essence, each lesson plan is for a single class period (or partial period) for the course. Each lesson plan consists of the following
  1. pre-work assignment for students,
  2. comprehension quiz,
  3. in-class discussion questions,
  4. teaching slides (in some cases), and
  5. student activities

Just-in-Time Report Templates

Much of our success in teaching writing to large groups of students in the College of Engineering at Penn State resides in using report templates that provide just-in-time training of students for several aspects of scientific writing: achieving a professional format, writing a summary, writing an introduction, incorporating references, and incorporating illustrations and equations. You are encouraged to download and adopt one of the templates below to suit your course's reports.

Contents of Lesson Plans

The following links will take you to an instructor lesson for the the corresponding writing lesson:
​
Summary: Writing as an engineer and scientist
Lesson 1: Analyzing audience, purpose, and occasion
Lesson 2: Being precise and clear
Lesson 3: Avoiding ambiguity
Lesson 4: Sustaining energy
Lesson 5: Connecting your ideas
Lesson 6: Beginning with the familiar 
Lesson 7: Organizing research papers
Lesson 8: Organizing technical reports
Lesson ​9: Writing emails and letters
​Lesson 10: Incorporating illustrations
Appendix A: Essence of grammar
Appendix B: Essence of punctuation
Appendix C: Avoiding common errors of usage
Appendix D: Choosing a professional format