Technical Writing: Themes from the Common Core T. R. Girill
Society for Technical Communication/Lawrence Livermore National
Lab. Technical Writing: Themes from the Common Core The Thematic
Challenge Adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS,
http://www.corestandards.org) by all but five U.S. states is a
bold, long-advocated step toward connecting K-12 science
classrooms with the actual communication challenges faced by
scientists and engineers in the world beyond school. But CCSS is
a large and complex document, sometimes confusing in spite of,
or perhaps because of, much redundancy across the school years
that it spans. In spreadsheet format I counted 114 rows of
requirements, at least 60 of which strongly pertain to "literacy
[reading or writing] for history, social studies, science, and
technical subjects" (to use the official CCSS terms). Finding
reliable ways to implement these CCSS science-literacy demands
(as well as relevant, supportive professional development) would
be easier if there were a