The microtheme approach is one strategy to help students learn subject matter and to strengthen writing skills. Microthemes are short writing assignments (500 words maximum) that focus on one aspect of the curriculum--one sub-point, sub-concept, or one facet of the lesson. In the sciences, microthemes are typically based on content that arise in lecture and lab. Microthemes can take many forms including a summary, interpretations of data, developing a solution to a problem, composing or analyzing a hypothetical scenario, developing evidence that supports a thesis, explaining a process, composing an editorial or email response, or interpreting different kinds of data.
Purposes of Microthemes
- Content Knowledge: Microthemes allow students to process information for long-term learning and application. These assignments can be used to
- supplement the instructor’s lecture
- help students prepare for a quiz or test
- help students prepare for a larger project or essay (as part of their process writing)
- Writing Skills: Microthemes allow students to practice their writing skills to communicate their scientific knowledge in clear, discipline-specific ways.
- Instructor Feedback: Microthemes allow the instructor to provide focused, brief, qualitative feedback more frequently, so students can progress in their writing skills.
Researched Benefits of Microthemes
- Students reported that microthemes helped them to better understand the material taught in class.
- Student reported that microthemes allowed them to practice for the exam’s short-answer questions.
- Since the instructor taught mini-lessons on different science-based rhetorical techniques that students applied in different microthemes, students reported that these mini-assignments increased their understanding of how to develop larger writing assignments or projects as
- The instructor noted that students’ writing became more focused on critical information with a decrease in “data dumping.”
- The instructor reported that grammar errors in students’ writing decreased due to their development of proofreading efforts.
Instruction of Microthemes
- Planning and Pacing of Microthemes: The instructor provides different kinds of microthemes to give students a range of rhetorical practice in the discipline. Also, the instructor paces microtheme assignments so that students progressively build knowledge and skills that are applied in a subsequent test, project, and/or essay.
- Instruction of Microthemes
- Clearly explain the microtheme prompt and the context, purpose, organization, and grading criteria of the microtheme.
- Give time for students in small groups to brainstorm their initial ideas about the microtheme.
- Provide time for one or more of the following as part of the instruction and practice:
- show and discuss a model microtheme and its criteria
- guide students to draft and revise at least one time to build skills
- guide students to self-evaluate their own microthemes
- provide focused feedback on a rubric that allows each student to develop clear and correct writing skills over the course of the semester.
Sample microtheme prompts: (1) Support the following statement: “The concept of natural resources as common property is at the root of many fisheries management problems throughout history.” (practice in supporting a claim w/ textual evidence); (2) Explain how electroshocking works as a fisheries collection tool. (practice in analyzing a proposed solution by selecting evidence and using logical reasoning); (3) You are a newspaper columnist who writes a question-and-answer column on fisheries and wildlife issues. You receive a reader’s email requesting solutions for their specific pond/fish situation. Provide a scientifically based answer to the question that uses simple terms a layperson can understand (practice with applying concepts to solve a problem from a scientific perspective, but translated to layperson rhetoric--awareness of audience; (4) Using comparison graphs of two different lakes before and after regulations, analyze the effects and explain the regulations’ different impacts on the two lakes. (practice applying a lens on the interpretations of graphs to deduce causes and effects).