Some people think of science as learning facts about the world around us. Others think of science and other ways of knowing as “the having of wonderful ideas” (Duckworth, 1987). This latter view of science and ways of knowing match the characteristics of young children as learners. Young children are naturally curious and passionate about learning (Raffini, 1993). In their pursuit of knowledge, they’re prone to poking, pulling, tasting, pounding, shaking, and experimenting. “From birth, children want to learn and they naturally seek out problems to solve” (Lind, 1999, p. 79).
Such attitudes and actions on the part of young children indicate that they engage in scientific thinking and actions long before they enter a classroom (Zeece, 1999). Unfortunately, when science education is introduced in a formal setting, it often reflects the understanding of science as the learning of facts. This approach has led some educators to suggest that “most science learning that takes place in formal settings is not true science” (Zeece, 1999, p. 161).This article will discuss the benefits of active, hands-on learning, goals for early childhood science programs, and suggestions for fostering scientific learning in the early childhood classroom.
Science as Active Exploration
While it is appropriate to introduce older students to science history and expect them to learn facts discovered by others, young children should learn science (and all other areas of study) through active involvement – that is, through first-hand, investigative experiences. Young children should be involved in “sciencing” versus the learning of scientific facts presented by others (Kilmer & Hofman, 1995; Mayesky, 1998; Zeece, 1999). Sciencing is a verb and suggests active involvement. Such involvement should be both hands-on and minds-on in nature. Thus, children should be engaged both physically and mentally in investigating and manipulating elements in their environment (Chaille & Britain, 2003; Kilmer & Hofman, 1995). To be developmentally appropriate and to be in compliance with national guidelines for the teaching of science, science education at the preschool and primary level must be “an active enterprise” (Lind, 1999, p. 73). Both the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996) and Benchmarks for Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993) call for an action-oriented and inquiry-based approach to science with young children. As articulated by Lind (1999), “the best way to learn science is to do science” (p. 74).
Therefore, science for young children should involve asking questions, probing for answers, conducting investigations, and collecting data. Science, rather than being viewed as the memorization of facts, becomes a way of thinking and trying to understand the world. This approach allows children to become engaged in the investigative nature of science (Kilmer & Hofman, 1995; Lind, 1999) and to experience the joy of having wonderful ideas (Duckworth, 1987).
Teachers can’t give children “wonderful ideas”; children need to discover or construct their own ideas. Developing new concepts or ideas is an active process and usually begins with child-centered inquiry, which focuses on the asking of questions relevant to the child. While inquiry involves a number of science-related activities and skills, “the focus is on the active search for knowledge or understanding to satisfy students’ curiosity” (Lind, 1999, p. 79). Knowing the right answer, then, is not one of the primary objectives of science in the early childhood curriculum. Duckworth (1987) refers to “knowing the right answer” as a passive virtue and discusses some of its limitations. “Knowing the right answer,” she says, “requires no decisions, carries no risks, and makes no demands. It is automatic. It is thoughtless” (p. 64). A far more important objective is to help children realize that answers about the world can be discovered through their own investigations. Sciencing, for example, involves coming up with ideas of one’s own. Developing these ideas and submitting them to someone else’s scrutiny is, according to Duckworth (1987), “a virtue in itself—unrelated to the rightness of the idea” (p. 68).
Developing ideas of one’s own add breadth and depth to learning. This is so, even if the child’s initial ideas are inaccurate views of the world. Duckworth (1987) explains: “Any wrong idea that is corrected provides far more depth than if one never had a wrong idea to begin with. You master the idea much more thoroughly if you have considered alternatives, tried to work it out in areas where it didn’t work, and figured out why it was that it didn’t work, all of which takes time” (pp. 71-72).
Desired goals of science in the early childhood curriculum include what we hope children will attain or achieve in three different areas: content, processes, and attitudes or dispositions. Content refers to the body of knowledge representing what we know about the world. Children’s body of knowledge develops and increases over time, and their desire to communicate and represent their knowledge should be acknowledged and supported.
The processes, or process skills, represent the active component of science and include such activities as predicting, observing, classifying, hypothesizing, experimenting, and communicating. Adults should support children in practicing and applying these skills in a variety of activities throughout the day. This can be done by showing a sincere interest in children’s observations and predictions and by providing a variety of materials and settings that invite experimentation.
Certain attitudes or dispositions are also central to scientific inquiry and discovery. These include curiosity, a drive to experiment, and a desire to challenge theories and to share new ideas (Conezio & French, 2002). Teachers should value these attitudes or dispositions, be aware of how they are manifested in young children, and find ways to acknowledge and nurture their presence.
Productive Questions to Foster Scientific Thinking*
Type of Question
Calls attention to significant details
What is it doing?
How does it feel?
Measuring & counting
Generates more precise information
Fosters analysis and classification
How are they alike?
Encourages exploration of properties and events; also encourages predictions
Supports planning & trying solutions to problems
How could we…?
Encourages reflection on experiences & construction of new ideas
Why do you think?
Can you explain that?
*Adapted from Martens, 1999, p. 26
Science in the Early Childhood Classroom
Science is often sadly neglected in the early childhood classroom (Johnson, 1999). Perhaps this is because science is “perceived and presented as too formal, too abstract, and too theoretical – in short, too hard for very young children and their teachers” (Johnson, 1999, p. 19). Perhaps this neglect is also due to the mistaken idea that the “constructivist” approach to education is incompatible with science education (Johnson, 1999).
A constructivist approach to education is based on the understanding that knowledge is constructed by children versus being given or transmitted to them.
In this approach, children are viewed as “intellectual explorers” (Lind, 1999) and “theory builders” (Chaille & Britain, 2003).This approach assumes that as they interact with the world around them, young children develop their own complex and varying theories about this world.
Teachers working from a constructivist approach provide a supportive environment where young children are encouraged to go about testing and revising their original theories. Key ingredients for a supportive environment include: a) a variety of interesting materials for children to explore and manipulate, b) unstructured time for children to develop and test their own ideas, and c) a social climate that tells the children that questions and experimentation are as valuable as knowing the right answers. Productive questions posed by the teacher at just the right time are also critically important to helping children construct their own understandings. Productive questions are, in fact, one of the most effective tools for supporting constructivist learning (Martens, 1999).
Most children have difficulty constructing understanding simply by engaging in an activity – that is, they “fail to make connections necessary to arrive at a desired understanding” (Martens, 1999, p. 25). Productive questions provide a bridge between what the children already know and what they experience through an activity. Productive questions thus “take a student forward in his or her thinking; they enable a teacher to provide scaffolding for students beginning to build their own understandings” (Martens, 1999, p. 25).
As outlined by Martens (1999) and presented on page 32, there are six different types of productive questions that work well with the constructivist approach to teaching and learning. These questions also support the science curriculum goals in an early childhood classroom. Used strategically, these questions allow teachers to meet students where they are in their thinking and provide the type of scaffolding needed at any given moment (Martens, 1999).The teacher’s choice as to what type of question to use is based on what the teacher hears and sees as the children engage in an activity.
The constructivist approach places the child at the center of the educational process. The teacher’s role in this approach is to serve as observer and facilitator rather than instructor (Chaille & Britain, 2003; Martens, 1999). Science education, however, has long been teacher-centered, with the teacher as the authority figure and the one with all the right answers. Without doubt, such a traditional science program – involving authority-based, teacher-directed instruction – is inappropriate for young children (Johnson, 1999). While best practices in science education at all levels call for a more hands-on, inquiry-based approach, the image of teacher-as-authority persists (Johnson, 1999). This image needs to change, so that young children can reap the benefits of a stimulating science curriculum that nurtures their curiosity and their on-going intellectual development. Through such a curriculum, children will experience the joy of having wonderful ideas – that is, the joy of finding out.
Science and Young Children: Comparing Approaches
· Science viewed as already-discovered knowledge
· Teacher viewed as authority
· Areas of study set by teacher
· Large group instruction and investigations
· Evaluation based on right answers
· Content not connected to children’s experiences
· Predetermined parameters around areas of study
· Prescribed ways to collect and record data
· Science viewed as separate area of the curriculum
· Science viewed as active exploration
· Teacher viewed as facilitator
· Areas of study set by child interest
· Individual and small group investigations
· Evaluation based on multiple criteria
· Content connected to children’s experiences
· Content of study open-ended
· Multiple ways to collect and record data
· Science integrated with other curricular areas
Fostering Scientific Thinking
One of the primary goals of the early childhood science curriculum is the development of scientific thinking in young children. Scientific thinking differs from the learning of scientific facts in that scientific thinking involves children in the process of finding out. Instead of learning what other people have discovered, scientific thinking leads children to make their own discoveries. Scientific thinking is manifest as young children ask questions, conduct investigations, collect data, and search for answers. Scientific thinking is evident, for example, when Jake puts one snowball in an empty bucket while he puts another snowball of about the same size in the water table. “I want to see which one lasts the longest,” he says.
Chaille and Britain (2003), inThe Young Children as Scientist, present a constructivist curriculum model for science and emphasize the importance of scientific thinking. They clearly debunk the notion that the constructivist approach is incompatible with science education. They describe young children as “actively inquiring natural scientists” (p. 20) and learning as “the process of theory building” (p. 5). This view of young children and how they learn is supported elsewhere in the literature where young children are described as being naturally curious and “biologically prepared to learn about the world around them” (Conezio & French, 2002, p. 12). In the above example, Jake knew that snow melts when exposed to warm temperatures. He wasn’t sure, however, if water at room temperature would make any difference in how quickly snow melted. His self-selected experiment was designed to help him find out.
To foster scientific thinking, teachers should view young children as active learners (versus recipients of knowledge) and give them varied opportunities to explore and experiment. Such opportunities will allow children to construct meaning and develop understandings that are not only valid but also valuable to their on-going intellectual development. The teacher, in response to Jake’s experiment, could extend – or scaffold – his learning by posing several productive questions (as presented on page 32) at opportune times. A measuring question would be a good place to start. How many minutes will it take before the snowball in the bucket melts? How many minutes for the snowball in the water table? Action questions and reasoning questions could follow: What would happen if we broke the snowball into smaller pieces? Why do you think the snowball in the water table melted first? Can you invent a rule about how things melt?
An environment that fosters scientific thinking is one that gives young children the time, space, and materials to exercise their curiosity. It also gives them the freedom to engage in child-centered explorations, experimentations, and explanations. Note that in the questions posed in relation to Jake’s experiment, the teacher avoided giving facts or stating rules. The questions posed invited more reflective thinking and further experimentation on Jake’s part. The experiment and the related findings were his, not the teacher’s or someone else’s.
To become engaged in scientific thinking, children need access to materials that they can take apart and the tools to assist them in doing so. They need places where they can dig in the dirt and dip water from a pond. They also need magnifying glasses, measuring tools, buckets, and frequent access to the natural world.
Teachers should take advantage of the different ways science can be naturally integrated into a play-centered curriculum. Science should not be viewed as an “add on” or a separate part of the early childhood program. Sciencing occurs, in many cases, in what children already do and how they think about what they do. As a child experiments with a mixture of oil and water, for example, she is making observations and predictions. The child is also building theories and testing those theories. These physical and mental manipulations represent the essence of what science is all about.
Children’s construction of knowledge can be enhanced through social interactions—that is, by sharing their observations and ideas with each other. Children should be encouraged to work together “in building theories, testing those theories, and then evaluating what worked, what didn’t, and why” (Conezio & French, 2002, p. 13). Shared inquiry where children work together can be especially beneficial in fostering curiosity and stimulating new ideas (Chaille & Britain, 2003). One way to involve children in shared inquiry is through solving problems that focus on a specific situation: How can we move this heavy box? or How do we find out what our turtle likes to eat? Shared inquiry generates a number of diverse ideas about the problem and challenges children to communicate the reasoning behind their ideas. There’s no doubt that “problem solving and reflective thinking play an important role in children’s science learning” (Lind, 1999, p. 80).
Science should be integrated into all the other curricular areas. Math, literacy, social studies, and art can all be linked to science. For literacy, it’s easy to introduce and/or reinforce scientific thinking through poetry, storytelling, and non-fiction children’s literature. The benefits of such integration, as outlined by Zeece (1999), include:
- providing accurate information in understandable and interesting language;
- offering topical information from varied viewpoints;
- helping children develop inquiring minds and a scientific approach to solving problems in increasingly sophisticated ways;
- presenting models of scientific methods of observation, hypothesis formulation, data gathering, experimentation, and evaluation; and
- fostering an appreciation, understanding, and respect for living things.
Science-based literature should be chosen carefully with attention to both literacy and science concerns in mind. As expressed by Zeece (1999), “Criteria for selection of natural science-based children’s literature ideally parallel those used for other high-quality literary resources” (p. 161). Additional considerations, however, relate to how elements of the natural world are represented and presented. With these considerations in mind, Zeece (1999) recommends choosing books with the following criteria in mind:
- current, factual content;
- clear and simple explanations;
- depth and complexity of subject matter closely matched to the developmental and interest level of children in the group;
- beautifully presented illustrations and narrative;
- content consistent with overarching philosophy of the program; and
- completeness and ease of use allowing children to answer questions and/or explore ideas effectively.
Science Concepts Typically Taught During the Preschool Years*
Systems (groups or collections having some influence on one another)
e.g.: parts of the human body; ecosystems (where animals and plants live interdependently)
Models (representations of real objects or phenomenon)
e.g.: word descriptions or drawings; physical models
Constancy and Change (how things change over time)
e.g.: seed to plant; different seasons; growth and decay
Scale (focusing on characteristics and comparisons)
e.g.: size; distance; quantity; weight
Patterns and Relationships (structure and organization of matter)
e.g.: properties of materials; alike and different comparisons; patterns in nature
Cause and Effect (explanations for phenomena)
e.g.: shadows; freezing/melting; gravity
Structure and Function (relationship between characteristic and action)
e.g.: makeup of plants and animals; tools; eating utensils
Variations (discontinuous and continuous properties)
e.g.: sounds; colors
Diversity (variety of types)
e.g.: seeds; leaves; living organisms
*Adapted from Kilmer & Hofman (1995)
From this discussion, it should be clear that the science curriculum in an early childhood program should include both teacher planned activities and “spontaneous sciencing.” Teachers should certainly plan a variety of interesting and challenging situations which invite young children to observe, explore, and experiment (Chaille & Britain, 2003). Examples of such situations include teacher-led explorations of the properties of water, characteristics of animals and their habitats, life cycles of plants, and patterns found in nature (seasons, light and shadows, day and night).Many rich opportunities for sciencing, however, occur on a daily basis during unplanned events in the classroom and on the playground. These opportunities invite spontaneous sciencing and can lead to the “having of wonderful ideas.”
“Spontaneous sciencing occurs whenever a child (or a teacher) sees something of interest and wonders about it” (Kilmer & Hofman, 1995, p. 55). A constructivist teacher recognizes such moments and pauses to observe, reflect, and explore with the children. The occasion may be icicles hanging from the roof, a bird building a nest, or ants at the base of a tree. By stopping to observe and reflect, teachers give children the opportunity to grow in appreciation and understanding of the world around them.
Children are naturally curious about the world and want to find out as much as they can. They want to know what makes the wind blow, how trees grow, why fish have fins, and where turtles go in the winter. But they don’t want adults to give them the answers. They want to be the discoverers, the experimenters, and the theory builders. They don’t want science to be something that is imparted to them; they want it to be something that they do. They want to be scientists; not just consumers of science. They want to ask their own questions, collect their own data, and arrive at new and wonderful ideas. These “wants” should shape the foundation of an early childhood science curriculum.
Ruth Wilson, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus of Special Education at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Dr. Wilson has focused much of her research and program development efforts on early childhood environmental education.
American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1993).Benchmarks for science literacy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chaille, C. & Britain, L. (2003).The young child as scientist (3rd ed.).Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Conezio, K, & French, L. (2002, September). Science in the preschool classroom: capitalizing on children’s fascination with the everyday world to foster language and literacy development. Young Children, pp. 12-18.
Duckworth, E. (1987).‘The Having of Wonderful Ideas’ and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
Johnson, J.R. (1999). The forum on early childhood science, mathematics, and technology education. In American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).Dialogue on Early Childhood Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education. Washington, DC: AAAS, pp. 14-25.
Kilmer, S.J., & Hofman, H. (1995). Transforming science curriculum. In S. Bredekamp & Rosegrant, T. (Eds.).Reaching potentials: Transforming early childhood curriculum and assessment, Vol. 2. Washington, DC: NAEYC, pp. 43-63.
Lind, K.K. (1999).Science in early childhood: developing and acquiring fundamental concepts and skills. In American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).Dialogue on early childhood science, mathematics, and technology education. Washington, DC: AAAS, pp. 73-83.
Martens, M.L. (1999, May).Productive questions: tools for supporting constructivist learning.Science and Children, pp. 24-27, 53.
Mayesky, M. (1998).Creative activities for young children (6th ed.).Albany, NY: Delmar.
National Research Council (1996).National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Raffini, J.P. (1993).Winners without losers: Structures and strategies for increasing student motivation to learn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Zeece, P.D. (1999). Things of nature and the nature of things: Natural science-based literature for young children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 26(3), 161-166.


4 Tidy Data via tidyr
In Subsection 2.2.1 we introduced the concept of a data frame: a rectangular spreadsheet-like representation of data in R where the rows correspond to observations and the columns correspond to variables describing each observation. In Section 2.4, we started explorations of our first data frame
flights included in the
nycflights13 package. In Chapter 3 we made graphics using data contained in
flights and other data frames.
In this chapter, we extend some of these ideas by discussing a type of data formatting called “tidy” data. You will see that having data stored in “tidy” format is about more than what the colloquial definition of the term “tidy” might suggest of having your data “neatly organized” in a spreadsheet. Instead, we define the term “tidy” in a more rigorous fashion, outlining a set of rules by which data can be stored and the implications of these rules on analyses.
Although knowledge of this type of data formatting was not necessary in our treatment of data visualization in Chapter 3 since all the data was already in tidy format, we’ll see going forward that having tidy data will allow you to more easily create data visualizations in a wide range of settings. Furthermore, it will also help you with data wrangling in Chapter 5 and in all subsequent chapters in this book when we cover regression and discuss statistical inference.
Let’s load all the packages needed for this chapter (this assumes you’ve already installed them). If needed, read Section 2.3 for information on how to install and load R packages.
library(dplyr) library(ggplot2) library(nycflights13) library(tidyr) library(readr)
Our approach to introducing the concept of “tidy” data is aligned with the approach taken in Alison Hill’s DataCamp course “Working with Data in the Tidyverse,” a course where students learn to work with data using tools from the tidyverse in R. If you’re interested in complementing your learning below in an interactive online environment, click on the image below to access the course. The relevant chapter is Chapter 3 “Tidy your data.”
4.1 What is tidy data?
You have surely heard the word “tidy” in your life:
- “Tidy up your room!”
- “Please write your homework in a tidy way so that it is easier to grade and to provide feedback.”
- Marie Kondo’s best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
- “I am not by any stretch of the imagination a tidy person, and the piles of unread books on the coffee table and by my bed have a plaintive, pleading quality to me - ‘Read me, please!’” - Linda Grant
What does it mean for your data to be “tidy”? Beyond just being organized, in the context of this book having “tidy” data means that your data follows a standardized format. This makes it easier for you and others to visualize your data, to wrangle/transform your data, and to model your data. We will follow Hadley Wickham’s definition of tidy data here (Wickham 2014):
A dataset is a collection of values, usually either numbers (if quantitative) or strings AKA text data (if qualitative). Values are organised in two ways. Every value belongs to a variable and an observation. A variable contains all values that measure the same underlying attribute (like height, temperature, duration) across units. An observation contains all values measured on the same unit (like a person, or a day, or a city) across attributes.
Tidy data is a standard way of mapping the meaning of a dataset to its structure. A dataset is messy or tidy depending on how rows, columns and tables are matched up with observations, variables and types. In tidy data:
- Each variable forms a column.
- Each observation forms a row.
- Each type of observational unit forms a table.
For example, say the following table consists of stock prices:
|Date||Boeing Stock Price||Amazon Stock Price||Google Stock Price|
Although the data are neatly organized in a spreadsheet-type format, they are not in tidy format since there are three variables corresponding to three unique pieces of information (Date, Stock Name, and Stock Price), but there are not three columns. In tidy data format each variable should be its own column, as shown below. Notice that both tables present the same information, but in different formats.
|Date||Stock Name||Stock Price|
However, consider the following table
In this case, even though the variable “Boeing Price” occurs again, the data is tidy since there are three variables corresponding to three unique pieces of information (Date, Boeing stock price, and the weather that particular day).
In this book, we will work mostly with datasets that are already in tidy format even though a lot of the world’s data isn’t always in this nice format that the
tidyverse gets its name from. Data that is in wide format can be converted to “tidy” format by using the
gather() function in the
tidyr package (Wickham and Henry 2018) in the
tidyverse; we’ll show an example of this in Section 4.4. For other examples of converting a dataset into “tidy” format, check out the different functions available for data tidying and a case study using data from the World Health Organization in R for Data Science (Grolemund and Wickham 2016).
(LC4.1) Consider the following data frame of average number of servings of beer, spirits, and wine consumption in three countries as reported in the FiveThirtyEight article Dear Mona Followup: Where Do People Drink The Most Beer, Wine And Spirits?
# A tibble: 3 x 4 country beer_servings spirit_servings wine_servings <chr> <int> <int> <int> 1 Canada 240 122 100 2 South Korea 140 16 9 3 USA 249 158 84
This data frame is not in tidy format. What would it look like if it were?
4.2 Back to nycflights13
nycflights13 package with data about all domestic flights departing from New York City in 2013 that we introduced in Section 2.4 and used extensively in Chapter 3 to create visualizations. In particular, let’s revisit the
flights data frame by running
View(flights) in your console. We see that
flights has a rectangular shape with each row corresponding to a different flight and each column corresponding to a characteristic of that flight. This matches exactly with how Hadley Wickham defined tidy data:
- Each variable forms a column.
- Each observation forms a row.
But what about the third property?
- Each type of observational unit forms a table.
4.2.1 Observational units
We identified earlier that the observational unit in the
flights dataset is an individual flight. And we have shown that this dataset consists of 336,776 flights with 19 variables. In other words, rows of this dataset don’t refer to a measurement on an airline or on an airport; they refer to characteristics/measurements on a given flight from New York City in 2013.
Also included in the
nycflights13 package are datasets with different observational units (Wickham 2018):
airlines: translation between two letter IATA carrier codes and names (16 in total)
planes: construction information about each of 3,322 planes used
weather: hourly meteorological data (about 8705 observations) for each of the three NYC airports
airports: airport names and locations
The organization of this data follows the third “tidy” data property: observations corresponding to the same observational unit should be saved in the same table/data frame.
Another example involves a spreadsheet of all students enrolled in a university along with information about them, such as name, gender, and date of birth. Each row represents an individual student, which is the observational unit in question.
4.2.2 Identification vs measurement variables
There is a subtle difference between the kinds of variables that you will encounter in data frames: measurement variables and identification variables. The
airports data frame you worked with above contains both these types of variables. Recall that in
airports the observational unit is an airport, and thus each row corresponds to one particular airport. Let’s pull them apart using the
Observations: 1,458 Variables: 8 $ faa <chr> "04G", "06A", "06C", "06N", "09J", "0A9", "0G6", "0G7", "0P2"... $ name <chr> "Lansdowne Airport", "Moton Field Municipal Airport", "Schaum... $ lat <dbl> 41.13047, 32.46057, 41.98934, 41.43191, 31.07447, 36.37122, 4... $ lon <dbl> -80.61958, -85.68003, -88.10124, -74.39156, -81.42778, -82.17... $ alt <int> 1044, 264, 801, 523, 11, 1593, 730, 492, 1000, 108, 409, 875,... $ tz <dbl> -5, -6, -6, -5, -5, -5, -5, -5, -5, -8, -5, -6, -5, -5, -5, -... $ dst <chr> "A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "A", "U", "A", "A", "U", "... $ tzone <chr> "America/New_York", "America/Chicago", "America/Chicago", "Am...
name are what we will call identification variables: variables that uniquely identify each observational unit. They are mainly used to provide a unique name to each observational unit, thereby allowing us to uniquely identify them.
faa gives the unique code provided by the FAA for that airport, while the
name variable gives the longer more natural name of the airport. The remaining variables (
tzone) are often called measurement or characteristic variables: variables that describe properties of each observational unit, in other words each observation in each row. For example,
long describe the latitude and longitude of each airport.
So in our above example of a spreadsheet of all students enrolled at a university, email address could be treated as an identical variable since it uniquely identifies each observational unit i.e. each student, while date of birth could not since it is possible (and highly probable) that two students share the same birthday.
Furthermore, sometimes a single variable might not be enough to uniquely identify each observational unit: combinations of variables might be needed (see Learning Check below). While it is not an absolute rule, for organizational purposes it is considered good practice to have your identification variables in the far left-most columns of your data frame.
(LC4.2) What properties of the observational unit do each of
tzone describe for the
airports data frame? Note that you may want to use
?airports to get more information.
(LC4.3) Provide the names of variables in a data frame with at least three variables in which one of them is an identification variable and the other two are not. In other words, create your own tidy dataset that matches these conditions.
4.3 Importing spreadsheets into R
Up to this point, we’ve used data either stored inside of an R package or we’ve manually created the data such as the
fruits_counted data in Subsection 3.8. Another common way to get data into R is by reading in data from a spreadsheet file either on your computer or online. Spreadsheet data is often saved in one of two formats:
- A Comma Separated Values
.csvfile. You can think of a CSV file as a bare-bones spreadsheet where:
- Each line in the file corresponds to one row of data/one observation.
- Values for each line are separated with commas. In other words, the values of different variables are separated by commas.
- The first line is often, but not always, a header row indicating the names of the columns/variables.
- An Excel
.xlsxfile. This format is based on Microsoft’s proprietary Excel software. As opposed to a bare-bones
.xlsxExcel files contain a lot of metadata, or put more simply, data about the data. Examples include the use of bold and italic fonts, colored cells, different column widths, and formula macros etc.
Google Sheets allows you to download your data in both comma separated values
.csv and Excel
.xlsx formats: Go to the Google Sheets menu bar -> File -> Download as -> Select “Microsoft Excel” or “Comma-separated values”.
We’ll cover two methods for importing data in R: one using the R console and the other using RStudio’s graphical interface.
4.3.1 Method 1: From the console
First, let’s download a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file of ratings of the level of democracy in different countries spanning 1952 to 1992: https://moderndive.com/data/dem_score.csv. We use the
read_csv() function from the
readr package to read it off the web and then take a look.
library(readr) dem_score <- read_csv("https://moderndive.com/data/dem_score.csv") dem_score
# A tibble: 96 x 10 country `1952` `1957` `1962` `1967` `1972` `1977` `1982` `1987` `1992` <chr> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> 1 Albania -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 5 2 Argentina -9 -1 -1 -9 -9 -9 -8 8 7 3 Armenia -9 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 7 4 Australia 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 5 Austria 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 6 Azerbaijan -9 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 1 7 Belarus -9 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 -7 7 8 Belgium 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 9 Bhutan -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 Bolivia -4 -3 -3 -4 -7 -7 8 9 9 # ... with 86 more rows
dem_score data frame, the minimum value of -10 corresponds to a highly autocratic nation whereas a value of 10 corresponds to a highly democratic nation.
4.3.2 Method 2: Using RStudio’s interface
Let’s read in the same data saved in Excel format this time at https://moderndive.com/data/dem_score.xlsx, but using RStudio’s graphical interface instead of via the R console. First download the Excel file, then go to the Files pane of RStudio -> Navigate to the directory where your downloaded
dem_score.xlsx is saved -> Click on
dem_score.xlsx -> Click “Import Dataset…” -> Click “Import Dataset…” At this point you should see an image like in
After clicking on the “Import” button on the bottom right RStudio save this spreadsheet’s data in a data frame called
dem_score and display its contents in the spreadsheet viewer. Furthermore you’ll see the code that read in your data in the console; you can copy and paste this code to reload your data again later instead of repeating the above manual process.
4.4 Converting to “tidy” data format
In this Section, we’ll show you how to convert a dataset that isn’t in “tidy” format i.e. “wide” format, to a dataset that is in “tidy” format i.e. “long/narrow” format. Let’s use the
dem_score data frame we loaded from a spreadsheet in the previous Section but focus on only data corresponding to the country of Guatemala.
guat_dem <- dem_score %>% filter(country == "Guatemala") guat_dem
# A tibble: 1 x 10 country `1952` `1957` `1962` `1967` `1972` `1977` `1982` `1987` `1992` <chr> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> 1 Guatemala 2 -6 -5 3 1 -3 -7 3 3
Now let’s produce a plot showing how the democracy scores have changed over the 40 years from 1952 to 1992 for Guatemala. Let’s start by laying out how we would map our aesthetics to variables in the data frame:
data = guat_dem
What are the names of the variables to plot? We’d like to see how the democracy score has changed over the years. Now we are stuck in a predicament. We see that we have a variable named
country but its only value is
"Guatemala". We have other variables denoted by different year values. Unfortunately, we’ve run into a dataset that is not in the appropriate format to apply the Grammar of Graphics and
ggplot2. Remember that
ggplot2 is a package in the
tidyverse and, thus, needs data to be in a tidy format. We’d like to finish off our mapping of aesthetics to variables by doing something like
aesthetic mapping is set by
aes(x = year, y = democracy_score)
but this is not possible with our wide-formatted data. We need to take the values of the current column names in
guat_dem (aside from
country) and convert them into a new variable that will act as a key called
year. Then, we’d like to take the numbers on the inside of the table and turn them into a column that will act as values called
democracy_score. Our resulting data frame will have three columns:
gather() function in the
tidyr package can complete this task for us. The first argument to
gather(), just as with
ggplot2(), is the
data argument where we specify which data frame we would like to tidy. The next two arguments to
value, which specify what we’d like to call the new columns that convert our wide data into long format. Lastly, we include a specification for variables we’d like to NOT include in this tidying process using a
guat_tidy <- gather(data = guat_dem, key = year, value = democracy_score, - country) guat_tidy
# A tibble: 9 x 3 country year democracy_score <chr> <chr> <int> 1 Guatemala 1952 2 2 Guatemala 1957 -6 3 Guatemala 1962 -5 4 Guatemala 1967 3 5 Guatemala 1972 1 6 Guatemala 1977 -3 7 Guatemala 1982 -7 8 Guatemala 1987 3 9 Guatemala 1992 3
We can now create the plot to show how the democracy score of Guatemala changed from 1952 to 1992 using a linegraph and
ggplot(data = guat_tidy, mapping = aes(x = year, y = democracy_score)) + geom_line()
geom_path: Each group consists of only one observation. Do you need to adjust the group aesthetic?
Observe that the
year variable in
guat_tidy is stored as a character vector since we had to circumvent the naming rules in R by adding backticks around the different year columns in
guat_dem. This is leading to
ggplot not knowing exactly how to plot a line using a categorical variable. We can fix this by using the
parse_number() function in the
readr package and then specify the horizontal axis label to be
ggplot(data = guat_tidy, mapping = aes(x = parse_number(year), y = democracy_score)) + geom_line() + labs(x = "year")
We’ll see in Chapter 5 how we could use the
mutate() function to change
year to be a numeric variable instead after we have done our tidying. Notice now that the mappings of aesthetics to variables make sense in Figure 4.2:
data = dem_score
aesthetic is mapped to
aesthetic is mapped to
geom_etry chosen is
(LC4.4) Convert the
dem_score data frame into a tidy data frame and assign the name of
dem_score_tidy to the resulting long-formatted data frame.
(LC4.5) Read in the life expectancy data stored at https://moderndive.com/data/le_mess.csv and convert it to a tidy data frame.
4.5 Optional: Normal forms of data
The datasets included in the
nycflights13 package are in a form that minimizes redundancy of data. We will see that there are ways to merge (or join) the different tables together easily. We are capable of doing so because each of the tables have keys in common to relate one to another. This is an important property of normal forms of data. The process of decomposing data frames into less redundant tables without losing information is called normalization. More information is available on Wikipedia.
We saw an example of this above with the
airlines dataset. While the
flights data frame could also include a column with the names of the airlines instead of the carrier code, this would be repetitive since there is a unique mapping of the carrier code to the name of the airline/carrier.
Below an example is given showing how to join the
airlines data frame together with the
flights data frame by linking together the two datasets via a common key of
"carrier". Note that this “joined” data frame is assigned to a new data frame called
joined_flights. The key variable that we frequently join by is one of the identification variables mentioned above.
library(dplyr) joined_flights <- inner_join(x = flights, y = airlines, by = "carrier")
View this dataset, we see a new variable has been created called
name. (We will see in Subsection 5.9.2 ways to change
name to a more descriptive variable name.) More discussion about joining data frames together will be given in Chapter 5. We will see there that the names of the columns to be linked need not match as they did here with
(LC4.6) What are common characteristics of “tidy” datasets?
(LC4.7) What makes “tidy” datasets useful for organizing data?
(LC4.8) What are some advantages of data in normal forms? What are some disadvantages?
4.6.1 Review questions
Review questions have been designed using the
fivethirtyeight R package (Kim, Ismay, and Chunn 2018) with links to the corresponding FiveThirtyEight.com articles in our free DataCamp course Effective Data Storytelling using the
tidyverse. The material in this chapter is covered in the Tidy Data chapter of the DataCamp course available here.
4.6.2 What’s to come?
In Chapter 5, we’ll further explore data in tidy format by grouping our data, creating summaries based on those groupings, filtering our data to match conditions, and performing other wranglings with our data including defining new columns/variables. These data wrangling procedures will go hand-in-hand with the data visualizations you’ve produced in Chapter 3.
4.6.3 Script of R code
An R script file of all R code used in this chapter is available here.


Writing Lessons and
Activities for Every Grade
* W.R.I.T.E. =
Write, Revise, Inform, Think, and Edit
How do you help your students overcome their fear of the blank page? How can you make writing an exercise in personal expression, not drudgery? One key to better writing is better writing assignments -- and the Internet has them. Let's tour a few of the finest writing activities that the Web has to offer.
Ray Saitz, a teacher/librarian and facilitator of information technology at Clarke High School in Newcastle, Ontario, put his 15 years of English teaching experience to work in creating a haven of resources for educators like himself.
He is becoming a "wired librarian," and his Web site, Outta Ray's Head, is his niche and offering to the educational community at large.
"Essentially, I became frustrated at finding endless ideas on the Internet but no lessons with tips on evaluation and with original handouts for the class," Saitz told Education World. "Most of the sites that I came across were mainly elementary, and I wanted secondary school lessons."
Several terrific tried-and-true Writing Lessons are featured on the site. Saitz explained that two of his favorite and most successful activities are The Biography Assignment and Review of Anything.
In the biography activity, students work in groups of four to create six good interview questions. Each student conducts an interview with a partner and then the two exchange roles. Their grade is determined by their performance in creating interview questions, writing the biography of their partner, and designing a cover for a book or a magazine article based on the interview.
The review writing lesson involves studying and creating a review of any object, person, or thing other than a book or a film. Students combine the characteristics of the informal essay and the review to write and share an oral presentation that has a thesis and incorporates techniques presented during class.
Another activity that hasn't yet made it to the pages of Saitz's site has students writing the end to a short story. "The gist of the lesson is to take a murder/mystery/suspense short story of about two or three pages and copy it," he explained, "but omit the final important last paragraph. You can make up some story about how the story was discovered in an old trunk and the end was rotted off. Read the story with the lights out and make a big deal of acting it up to build suspense. Just when it nearly ends, stop and ask the students to complete the ending using the same style as the writer.
"The students all write pages and pages," added Saitz, "and then a few days later, you can come into the class with the original ending. I say it was found just that day and was in the newspaper. Then they compare their endings to the author's."
Saitz hopes that his site and its lessons provide a resource of ideas that will help teachers extend their repertoire. "I think that I learned the most when I was a student teacher and I saw other teachers teaching," he said. "When we graduate and start teaching, we can stop growing and learning. I hope that the lessons on the site help other teachers realize new possibilities or open new avenues of discovery."
These writing lessons and activities will allow the young authors in your classroom to shine!
Paragraph Writing. Many elementary teachers lose heart as they read short, choppy paragraphs from their students that contain little variation in sentence structure. Successful Paragraphs is a lesson plan with a unique approach to improving student writing. Students list three material things they wish for, three happenings that would make them happy, and three places they would like to visit. They follow a specific pattern to create a paragraph that tells what it would be like for them to enjoy all those things. Using the template helps them see how variation in structure makes for more interesting reading!
Terrific Topics. Often the most difficult part of writing is getting started, and this problem is frequently related to the quest for the perfect topic. A good topic is the well from which ideas flow, so it needs to be plenty deep! If you too are having difficulty coming up with assignments that will bring forth the wonderful stories your students have to tell, visit Writing Topics. This page, from the Write Source, suggests several topics for papers your students will love to write, and all grade levels are addressed. Be sure to bookmark or print this resource from The Write Source, a development house of educational materials.
Story Boxes. Creativity and language flourish in Story Boxes, an activity included on the Pizzaz Web site. You can collect objects for the story boxes, or you can have your students fill the boxes with objects and words written on pieces of paper or sticks. As the students draw objects from the box, a story unfolds. Use the plan as an oral storytelling activity or a written composition. This is not the only excellent lesson in the collection, so visit the homepage for more gems. Best of all, permission to print and copy the handouts is granted for classroom use!
Free Activities. Each month, Zaner-Bloser: Writing offers new, free activities on-line for use with students in grades 3 and up. The activities may be printed and shared with students to exercise their writing skills. A recent issue of activities addressed descriptive writing. Don't miss this opportunity to glean a few excellent handouts and ideas from these experts in the field.
More Free Activities.Scholastic.com: Writing also provides free activities to download and print. (To access these documents, you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.) Some activities take a few minutes to load, but they are worth the wait. Sample activities include two types of stationery for student letters and a handout that encourages students to contemplate and write about their plans for the future.
Pop-Up Cards. There is an art to writing a good greeting card and an art to making it pleasing to the eye and unusual. Pop-up cards are definitely unique! Your students will be amazed when they follow the card-making directions at How to Make a Pop-Up from Joan Irvine: the Pop-Up Lady. When the work is complete, your students will have a lovely pop-up animal card that is ready for their own special sentimental touch -- the right verse!
Heroic Efforts. Have you noticed that in all epic tales -- Great Expectations, The Odyssey, Star Wars -- there seems to be a prevailing pattern in the story? This site explores the progression of the hero throughout these tales based on observations contained in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. Visitors to The Hero's Journey can examine the steps in a hero's story and read examples from ancient stories or present-day movies that illustrate the concepts. As a final project, students can follow the guidelines of the site to create their own hero stories in this pattern.
Essay Writing. What could be easier than writing a simple essay? Writing one with assistance from the Guide to Writing a Basic Essay! This site takes students through choosing a topic, organizing ideas, composing a thesis, writing the body of the paper, creating an introduction and a conclusion, and adding the finishing touches. With this on-line guide, there is no excuse for a poorly constructed essay.
Writing Worksheets. High-school English teachers have been waiting for a source like this! At OWL Handouts, the Purdue University Online Writing Lab has collected and published handouts for students that address everything from writing research papers to spelling and punctuation. Choose from an extensive group of straightforward guides to complement writing assignments in your classroom. Your students will thank you!
Teach your students to create great friendly letters and give them a reason to learn how! First, introduce the topic of the friendly letter and compare it to the business letter with the examples at Letter Formats. Next, have your students make their own stationery or print one of the cute selections at Friendly Stationery from Jan Brett.
You might have your students write to famous authors, political figures, or even celebrities. You'll find addresses for many well-known actors, actresses, and musical performers online. (Do a Google search for "celebrity addresses." You'll want to supervise student selections if you allow them to use this site.) Add an element of fun by calling the assignment "Dear John Letters" and having the students write to famous people who have John as a part of their names. Don't forget Elton John, Olivia Newton-John, and Pope John Paul II!
Is a business letter more what you had in mind? Then Parts of a Business Letter will help you prepare your students for the business world. Give your students some pointers in writing business communications, and then have them write letters to organizations. They could write to support the efforts of a charity or to complain about a problem with a product or a service. You might even have them write to an address in the book Free Stuff for Kids (published by Meadowbrook Press) and request free materials.
Anyone who writes knows how daunting the empty page can be! Graphic organizers help students overcome the blank sheet and help them put their thoughts in a logical order.
Kathy Baxter and David Leahy of Greenway Elementary School in Beaverton, Oregon, created graphic organizers and placed them on the school Web site for all to see. Setting and Events are designed to be used in writing personal narratives, and Persuasive helps students create persuasive pieces by forcing them to state an opinion, support it with three points, give examples, and summarize their belief in a conclusion.
Writing Plans from The Teacher's Desk
Put one of these great writing activities to good use in your classroom. Choices include a list of assignments for fifth- and sixth-grade students to write a paragraph a week for two years!
A+ Research and Writing for High School and College Students
Designed for upper-level students, this guide helps kids write research papers without going nuts! The site explains how to write a research paper, tells how to locate information on the Internet, and advises students about what material is best found in the library, not on the Web.
Article by Cara Bafile
Copyright © 2010 Education World
Last updated 08/04/2011
Efficient Ways to Improve Student Writing
Strategies, Ideas, and Recommendations from the faculty Development Literature
- View the improvement of students’ writing as your responsibility.
Teaching writing is not only the job of the English department alone. Writing is an essential tool for learning a discipline and helping students improve their writing skills is a responsibility for all faculty.
- Let students know that you value good writing.
Stress the importance of clear, thoughtful writing. Faculty who tell students that good writing will be rewarded and poor writing will be penalized receive better essays than instructors who don't make such demands. In the syllabus, on the first day, and throughout the term, remind students that they must make their best effort in expressing themselves on paper. Back up your statements with comments on early assignments that show you really mean it, and your students will respond.
- Regularly assign brief writing exercises in your classes.
To vary the pace of a lecture course, ask students to write a few minutes during class. Some mixture of in-class writing, outside writing assignments, and exams with open-ended questions will give students the practice they need to improve their skills.
- Provide guidance throughout the writing process.
After you have made the assignment, discuss the value of outlines and notes, explain how to select and narrow a topic, and critique the first draft, define plagiarism as well.
- Don't feel as though you have to read and grade every piece of your students' writing.
Ask students to analyze each other's work during class, or ask them to critique their work in small groups. Students will learn that they are writing in order to think more clearly, not obtain a grade. Keep in mind, you can collect students' papers and skim their work.
- Find other faculty members who are trying to use writing more effectively in their courses.
Pool ideas about ways in which writing can help students learn more about the subject matter. See if there is sufficient interest in your discipline to warrant drawing up guidelines. Students welcome handouts that give them specific instructions on how to write papers for a particular course or in a particular subject area.
Teaching Writing When You Are Not an English Teacher
- Remind students that writing is a process that helps us clarify ideas.
Tell students that writing is a way of learning, not an end in itself. Also let them know that writing is a complicated, messy, nonlinear process filled with false starts. Help them to identify the writer's key activities:
- Developing ideas
- Finding a focus and a thesis
- Composing a draft
- Getting feedback and comments from others
- Revising the draft by expanding ideas, clarifying meaning, reorganizing
- Presenting the finished work to readers
- Explain that writing is hard work.
Share with your class your own struggles in grappling with difficult topics. If they know that writing takes effort, they won't be discouraged by their own pace or progress. One faculty member shared with students their notebook that contained the chronology of one of his published articles: first ideas, successive drafts, submitted manuscript, reviewers' suggested changes, revised version, galley proofs, and published article.
- Give students opportunities to talk about their writing.
Students need to talk about papers in progress so that they can formulate their thoughts, generate ideas, and focus their topics. Take five or ten minutes of class time for students to read their writing to each other in small groups or pairs. It's important for students to hear what their peers have written.
- Encourage students to revise their work.
Provide formal steps for revision by asking students to submit first drafts of papers for your review or for peer critique. You can also give your students the option of revising and rewriting one assignment during the semester for a higher grade. Faculty report that 10 to 40 percent of the students take advantage of this option.
- Explain thesis statements.
A thesis statement makes an assertion about some issue. A common student problem is to write papers that present overviews of facts with no thesis statement or that have a diffuse thesis statement.
- Stress clarity and specificity.
The more the abstract and difficult the topic, the more concrete the student's language should be. Inflated language and academic jargon camouflage rather than clarify their point.
- Explain the importance of grammar and sentence structure, as well as content.
Students shouldn't think that English teachers are the only judges of grammar and style. Tell your students that you will be looking at both quality of their writing and the content.
- Distribute bibliographies and tip sheets on good writing practices.
Check with your English department or writing center to identify materials that can be easily distributed to students. Consider giving your students a bibliography of writing guides, for example:
Crews, F.C. Random House Handbook. (6th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992.
A classic comprehensive textbook for college students. Well written and well worth reading.
Lanham, R.A. Revising Prose. (3rd ed.) New York: Scribner's, 1991. Techniques for eliminating
bureaucratese and restoring energy to tired prose.
Tollefson, S. K. Grammar Grams and Grammar Grams II. New York: HarperCollins, 1989,
1992. Two short, witty guides that answer common questions about grammar, style, and usage. Both are fun to read.
- Science and Engineering
Barrass, R. Scientists Must Write. New York: Chapman and Hall, 1978. Biddle, A. W., and Bean, D. J. Writer's Guide: Life Sciences. Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1987.
- Arts and Humanities
Barnet, S. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. Goldman, B. Reading and Writing in the Arts. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978.
- Social Sciences
Biddle, A. W., Fulwiler, T., and Holland, K.M. Writer's Guide: Psychology. Lexington, Mass,:
McCloskey, D. N. The Writing of Economics. New York: Macmillan, 1987.
- Ask a composition instructor to give a presentation to your students.
Invite a guest speaker from the composition department or student learning center to talk to your students about effective writing and common writing problems. Faculty who have invited these experts report that such presentations reinforce the values of the importance of writing.
- Let students know about available tutoring services.
Individual or group tutoring in writing is available on most campuses. Ask someone from the tutoring center to give a demonstration in your class.
- Use computers to help students write better.
Locally developed and commercially available software are now being used by faculty to help students plan, write, and revise their written work. Some software available allows instructors to monitor students' work in progress and lets students collaborate with their classmates.
Assigning In-Class Writing Activities
- Ask students to write what they know about a topic before you discuss it.
Ask your students to write a brief summary of what they already know or what opinions they hold regarding the subject you are about to discuss. The purpose of this is to focus the students' attention, there is no need to collect the summaries.
- Ask students to respond in writing to questions you pose during class.
Prior to class starting, list two or three short-answer questions on the board and ask your students to write down their responses. Your questions might call for a review of material you have already discussed or recalling information from assigned readings.
- Ask students to write from a pro or con position.
When presenting an argument, stop and ask your students to write down all the reasons and evidence they can think of that supports one side or the other. These statements can be used as the basis for discussion.
- During class, pause for a three-minute write.
Periodically ask students to write freely for three minutes on a specific question or topic. They should write whatever pops into their mind without worrying about grammar, spelling, phrasing, or organization. This kind of free writing, according to writing experts, helps students synthesize diverse ideas and identify points they may not understand. There is no need to collect these exercises.
- Have students write a brief summary at the end of class.
At the end of the class period, give your students index cards to jot down the key themes, major points, or general principles of the day's discussion. You can easily collect the index cards and review them to see whether the class understood the discussion.
- Have one student keep minutes to be read at the next class meeting.
By taking minutes, students get a chance to develop their listening, synthesizing, and writing skills. Boris (1983) suggests the following:
- Prepare your students by having everyone take careful notes for the class period, go home and rework them into minutes, and hand them in for comments. It can be the students' discretion whether the minutes are in outline or narrative form.
- Decide on one to two good models to read or distribute to the class.
- At the beginning of each of the following classes, assign one student to take minutes for the period.
- Give a piece of carbon paper to the student who is taking minutes so that you can have a rough copy. The student then takes the original home and revises it in time to read it aloud at the next class meeting.
- After the student has read their minutes, ask other students to comment on their accuracy and quality. If necessary, the student will revise the minutes and turn in two copies, one for grading and one for your files.
- Structure small group discussion around a writing task.
For example, have your students pick three words that are of major importance to the day's session. Ask your class to write freely for two to three minutes on just one of the words. Next, give the students five to ten minutes to meet in groups to share what they have written and generate questions to ask in class.
- Use peer response groups.
Divide your class into groups of three or four, no larger. Ask your students to bring to class enough copies of a rough draft of a paper for each person in their group. Give your students guidelines for critiquing the drafts. In any response task, the most important step is for the reader to note the part of the paper that is the strongest and describe to the writer why it worked so well. The following instructions can also be given to the reader:
- State the main point of the paper in a single sentence
- List the major subtopics
- Identify confusing sections of the paper
- Decide whether each section of the paper has enough detail, evidence, and information
- Indicate whether the paper's points follow one another in sequence
- Judge the appropriateness of the opening and concluding paragraphs
- Identify the strengths of the paper
Written critiques done as homework are likely to be more thoughtful, but critiques may also be done during the class period.
- Use read-around groups.
Read-around groups are a technique used with short assignments (two to four pages) which allows everyone to read everyone else's paper. Divide the class into groups no larger than four students and divide the papers (coded for anonymity) into as many sets as there are groups. Give each group a set and ask the students to read each paper silently and decide on the best paper in the set. Each group should discuss their choices and come to a consensus on the best paper. The paper's code number is recorded by the group, and the same process is repeated with a new set of papers. After all the groups have read all the sets of papers, someone from each group writes on the board the code number from the best paper in each set. The recurring numbers are circled. Generally, one to three papers stand out.
- Ask students to identify the characteristics of effective writing.
After completing the read-around activity, ask your students to reconsider those papers which were voted as excellent by the entire class and to write down features that made each paper outstanding. Write their comments on the board, asking for elaboration and probing vague generalities. In pairs, the students discuss the comments on the board and try to put them into categories such as organization, awareness of audience, thoroughness of detail, etc. You might need to help your students arrange the characteristics into meaningful categories.
The Strategies, Ideas and Recommendations Here Come Primarily From:
Gross Davis, B. Tools for Teaching. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1993.
And These Additional Sources…
Boris, E. Z. "Classroom Minutes: A Valuable Teaching Device." Improving College and
UniversityTeaching, 1983,31(2), 70-73.
Elbow, P. "Using Writing to Teach Something Else." Unpublished paper, 1987.
Hawisher, G. E., and Selfe, C. L. (eds.).Critical Perspectives on Computers and
Composition Instruction. New York: Teachers College Press, 1989.
Holdstein, D. H., and Selfe, C. L. (eds.). Computers and Writing: Theory, Research,
Practice. New York: Modern Language Association, 1990.
Lowman, J. Mastering the Techniques of Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1984.
Petersen, B. T. "Additional Resources in the Practice of Writing Across the Disciplines."
In C. W. Griffin (ed.), Teaching Writing in All Disciplines. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, no. 12. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982.
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education.
Bright Idea Network, 1989. (For information contact David Graf, Iowa State University, Ames.)
Pytlik, B. P. "Teaching Teachers of Writing: Workshops on Writing as a Collaborative
Process." College Teaching, 1989, 37(1), 12-14.
Tollefson, S. K. Encouraging Student Writing. Berkeley: Office of Educational
Development, University of California, 1988.
Walvoord, B. F. Helping Students Write Well: A Guide for Teachers in All Disciplines.
(2nd ed.) New York: Modern Language Association, 1986.
Watkins, B. T. "More and More Professors in Many Academic Disciplines Routinely
Require Students to Do Extensive Writing."Chronicle of Higher Education, 1990, 36(44), pp. A13-14, A16.


Students are asked to write literary analysis essays because this type of assignment encourages you to think about how and why a poem, short story, novel, or play was written. To successfully analyze literature, you’ll need to remember that authors make specific choices for particular reasons. Your essay should point out the author’s choices and attempt to explain their significance.
Another way to look at a literary analysis is to consider a piece of literature from your own perspective. Rather than thinking about the author’s intentions, you can develop an argument based on any single term (or combination of terms) listed below. You’ll just need to use the original text to defend and explain your argument to the reader.
Allegory - narrative form in which the characters are representative of some larger humanistic trait (i.e. greed, vanity, or bravery) and attempt to convey some larger lesson or meaning to life. Although allegory was originally and traditionally character based, modern allegories tend to parallel story and theme.
- William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily- the decline of the Old South
- Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- man’s struggle to contain his inner primal instincts
- District 9- South African Apartheid
- X Men- the evils of prejudice
- Harry Potter- the dangers of seeking “racial purity”
Character - representation of a person, place, or thing performing traditionally human activities or functions in a work of fiction
- Protagonist - The character the story revolves around.
- Antagonist - A character or force that opposes the protagonist.
- Minor character - Often provides support and illuminates the protagonist.
- Static character - A character that remains the same.
- Dynamic character - A character that changes in some important way.
- Characterization - The choices an author makes to reveal a character’s personality, such as appearance, actions, dialogue, and motivations.
Look for: Connections, links, and clues between and about characters. Ask yourself what the function and significance of each character is. Make this determination based upon the character's history, what the reader is told (and not told), and what other characters say about themselves and others.
Connotation - implied meaning of word. BEWARE! Connotations can change over time.
- confidence/ arrogance
- mouse/ rat
- cautious/ scared
- curious/ nosey
- frugal/ cheap
Denotation - dictionary definition of a word
Diction - word choice that both conveys and emphasizes the meaning or theme of a poem through distinctions in sound, look, rhythm, syllable, letters, and definition
Figurative language - the use of words to express meaning beyond the literal meaning of the words themselves
- Metaphor - contrasting to seemingly unalike things to enhance the meaning of a situation or theme without using like or as
- You are the sunshine of my life.
- Simile - contrasting to seemingly unalike things to enhance the meaning of a situation or theme using like or as
- What happens to a dream deferred, does it dry up like a raisin in the sun
- Hyperbole - exaggeration
- I have a million things to do today.
- Personification - giving non-human objects human characteristics
- America has thrown her hat into the ring, and will be joining forces with the British.
Foot - grouping of stressed and unstressed syllables used in line or poem
- Iamb - unstressed syllable followed by stressed
- Made famous by the Shakespearian sonnet, closest to the natural rhythm of human speech
- How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
- Spondee - stressed stressed
- Used to add emphasis and break up monotonous rhythm
- Blood boil, mind-meld, well- loved
- Trochee - stressed unstressed
- Often used in children’s rhymes and to help with memorization, gives poem a hurried feeling
- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
- Anapest - unstressed unstressed stressed
- Often used in longer poems or “rhymed stories”
- Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
- Dactyls - stressed unstressed unstressed
- Often used in classical Greek or Latin text, later revived by the Romantics, then again by the Beatles, often thought to create a heartbeat or pulse in a poem
- Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
The iamb stumbles through my books; trochees rush and tumble; while anapest runs like a hurrying brook; dactyls are stately and classical.
Imagery - the author’s attempt to create a mental picture (or reference point) in the mind of the reader. Remember, though the most immediate forms of imagery are visual, strong and effective imagery can be used to invoke an emotional, sensational (taste, touch, smell etc) or even physical response.
Meter - measure or structuring of rhythm in a poem
Plot - the arrangement of ideas and/or incidents that make up a story
- Foreshadowing - When the writer clues the reader in to something that will eventually occur in the story; it may be explicit (obvious) or implied (disguised).
- Suspense - The tension that the author uses to create a feeling of discomfort about the unknown
- Conflict - Struggle between opposing forces.
- Exposition - Background information regarding the setting, characters, plot.
- Rising Action - The process the story follows as it builds to its main conflict
- Crisis - A significant turning point in the story that determines how it must end
- Resolution/Denouement - The way the story turns out.
Point of View - pertains to who tells the story and how it is told. The point of view of a story can sometimes indirectly establish the author's intentions.
- Narrator - The person telling the story who may or may not be a character in the story.
- First-person - Narrator participates in action but sometimes has limited knowledge/vision.
- Second person - Narrator addresses the reader directly as though she is part of the story. (i.e. “You walk into your bedroom. You see clutter everywhere and…”)
- Third Person (Objective) - Narrator is unnamed/unidentified (a detached observer). Does not assume character's perspective and is not a character in the story. The narrator reports on events and lets the reader supply the meaning.
- Omniscient - All-knowing narrator (multiple perspectives). The narrator knows what each character is thinking and feeling, not just what they are doing throughout the story. This type of narrator usually jumps around within the text, following one character for a few pages or chapters, and then switching to another character for a few pages, chapters, etc. Omniscient narrators also sometimes step out of a particular character’s mind to evaluate him or her in some meaningful way.
Rhythm - often thought of as a poem’s timing. Rhythm is the juxtaposition of stressed and unstressed beats in a poem, and is often used to give the reader a lens through which to move through the work. (See meter and foot)
Setting - the place or location of the action. The setting provides the historical and cultural context for characters. It often can symbolize the emotional state of characters. Example – In Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, the crumbling old mansion reflects the decaying state of both the family and the narrator’s mind. We also see this type of emphasis on setting in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice.
Speaker - the person delivering the poem. Remember, a poem does not have to have a speaker, and the speaker and the poet are not necessarily one in the same.
Structure (fiction) - The way that the writer arranges the plot of a story.
Look for: Repeated elements in action, gesture, dialogue, description, as well as shifts in direction, focus, time, place, etc.
Structure(poetry) - The pattern of organization of a poem. For example, a Shakespearean sonnet is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter. Because the sonnet is strictly constrained, it is considered a closed or fixed form. An open or free form poem has looser form, or perhaps one of the author’s invention, but it is important to remember that these poems are not necessarily formless.
Symbolism - when an object is meant to be representative of something or an idea greater than the object itself.
- Cross - representative of Christ or Christianity
- Bald Eagle - America or Patriotism
- Owl - wisdom or knowledge
- Yellow - implies cowardice or rot
Tone - the implied attitude towards the subject of the poem. Is it hopeful, pessimistic, dreary, worried? A poet conveys tone by combining all of the elements listed above to create a precise impression on the reader.
"To explicate" something is, in the most general sense of the term, to spell out its implications. Thus the noun "explication," in the corresponding sense, is, in the first instance, the process of spelling out the implications of something. And derived from this, in turn, is the sense of "explication" that refers to the product of this process: some account of what the implications of something are. Explication, in other words, is a kind of explanation (note 1). But usually the thing whose implications are being explicated is a text, or something that is being treated as a text. Thus we say that a lawyer tries to persuade a judge that his opponent's explication of some previous decision is mistaken -- the implications of the previous case, for the case the judge must decide today, are different from what opposing counsel represents them to be. Or we might note that theologians, historically, have disagreed on how to explicate this or that passage of the Bible. But in ordinary usage we probably would say, of a doctor who manages to diagnose a patient's symptoms, that he has explained them, rather than that he has "explicated" them (though we could sensically stretch the term "explicate" to cover this if we wanted to and there was some special reason for doing so).
"Explication" in a literary critical sense often refers to nothing more than this: spelling out the implications of the text -- this bit, or that bit, on whatever occasion may arise. In this sense, any time one draws an inference from any explicit detail of the work, one is "doing explication." From a gesture or remark, in some social context, one "sees" this or that motive at work. From the phrasing of a narrator's or character's remarks, one understands that the speaker is being ironic. From the realization that two characters (or two settings or whatever) stand in the relation of foil, or of equivalent ("double") to one another, one notices something unstated about the one on the basis of what has noticed (stated or unstated) about the other. It may be that this interpretive activity is embedded in an essay whose overall organization is some form of logical hierarchy of claims; but whenever one is drawing out implications, one is doing explication in this broad, general sense.
But there is another sense of the term that has arisen in literary critical discourse, that is much more specific, and that takes into account the organization of the interpretive activity, or at least of its presentation. In this more specific sense of the term, "explication" involves going through the explicit text, from beginning to end (as a whole, or within a section), and systematically spelling out what the given string of explicit details, or events, or episodes, or scenes, or stanzas, brings to mind to an appropriately engaged reader's mind. When this is done, the resulting interpretation, the interpretive discourse (whether oral or written) will be organized chronologically rather than logically. That is, the organization of an explication, considered as a particular type of critical discourse, is taken over from the work under discussion. And if we are dealing with fiction, plays, films, and most poems, the order of explicit details, events, episodes, that constitutes them is typically going to be temporal. The reason for this is that time is the mode of experience, and works of literature are generally designed, first and foremost, to convey some experience. If we then undertake to unpack "on the fly" the unfolding of the implicit dimensions of that unfolding experience, the order of our own observations will be dictated by the order of the facts as presented in the work that is seeking to sponsor or convey that experience.
This is something that we do lots in class, though our doing of it is typically confined to a passage, rather than carried through over the entire text. But it is not what will be asked for in most of the writing you will be called upon to do in our course. Here, the job will be something that, for lack of a better term, we will call "analysis." If the fiction writer's task (or the dramatist's or film-maker's or poet's) is to afford us some clarifiable, intelligible experience, our task (unless you are definitely told otherwise) will be to clarify some particular aspect of the significance of that experience. The internal grammatical structure of these phrases is instructive.
In the first, the direct object of the verb is "experience," and the concepts "clarifiable" and "intelligible" are adjectives that modify (are subordinate to) that notion.
Writers select and arrange the details that, together, constitute the experience they want to convey in such a manner as to suggest what the significance of it is, or may be supposed to be. But because they are interested in getting us vicariously to undergo that experience, the overall organizational framework within which these details will be presented will be chronological (even if interrupted by flashbacks, flashforwards, or commentary), because the mode of experience is temporal. That is, what we call experience is something that by its very nature flows from moment to moment.
We might say that, here, the order of events is the dog, and the implications / inferences / ideas to which they logically give rise are the tail. Except in very special circumstances (note 2), for a fiction writer to organize the text as an argument or exposition, rather than as a narrative, is to be at cross-purposes with himself. Like a carpenter trying to drive nails with a saw, this would be to pick the wrong tool for the job. Or (to return to the metaphor we began with): it is to make the tail wag the dog.
In the second, the verbal concept "clarify" governs the direct object, "some particular aspect of the significance of that experience." And within that phrase, in turn, the concept "experience" appears as part of the adjectival prepositional phrase that is subordinate to "significance."
Between "significance" and "experience" here, in other words, it is "significance" that is the dog, and "experience" that is the tail. Now significance is constituted by a network of implications. And if we want systematically to clarify some particular aspect of that significance, what will concern us will be some discernable hierarchy of implications that fall under that aspect. And since the relationships that constitute a hierarchy of implications will be logical, the organizational strategy appropriate to clarifying them will be expository-argumentative rather than narrative. Of course, we will constantly need to be referring to the explicit facts of the story, but when we do, we will be taking them up as evidence for our interpretive claims. And it is the logical relationships among these interpretive inferences, and between them and the evidence for them -- not the original order of the events referred to as evidence for them -- that governs our moving from one to the other. So: if we are trying to clarify some particular aspect of the significance of a literary work, we will be working at cross-purposes with ourselves if we organize the body of our essay around the plot or story-sequence of the work we are analyzing. Like a carpenter trying to cut a board with a claw hammer, we are taking up the wrong tool for the job. If we are doing analysis, for us to adopt the organizational framework of the work we are analyzing is to let what is for us the tail wag what is for us the dog.
For useful pointers on devising an essay organized around a logically integrated hierarchy of claims, see Craig Waddell's "Threads of Thought: Thesis Development in Analytical Writing." This memo discusses how to define, focus, and develop a thesis, and explains the important difference between a tentative (provisional) and definitive (final) thesis. (This is one of a number of helpful handouts on-line at the Rensselaer Writing Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.) Or consult Chuck Guilford's Paradigm Online Writing Assistant on "Writing Thesis/Support Essays" and "Writing Argumentative Essays" (which are a special subcategory of thesis/support essays).
On the minimal requirements for a logical framework of organization in an analytical paper, see "Developing an Outline," which is one of over a hundred handouts -- Resources for Writers -- made available at the Purdue University On-Line Writing Lab. There is also good advice on "Organizing Your Writing" on the Paradigm Online Writing Assistant.
For an excellent set of pointers by an obviously experienced reader of undergraduate papers, see the memo "Writing Pages of Literary Analysis" by Seamus Cooney at the University of Northern Michigan. (Unfortunately, you may have to content yourself with reading this on line: I have not had success in getting it to print out.)
If you would like to consult a "handbook" on points of grammar and style, check out the one provided by Jack Lynch of the University of Pennsylvania.
(For a rich page of links to various kinds of writing resources all over the Web, you might want to bookmark Jack Lynch's "Resources for Writers and Writing Instructors." This is worth exploring someday when you have a little time on your hands. [Hm.])
Finally, on our own site there is a checklist of criteria for evaluating exams, which applies both to out-of-class essays and to shorter essay-type answers on in-class exams.
Why our assignments call for analysis rather than explication.
In our assignments, youll want to move beyond the "parasitic narrative structure" characteristic of explication. There is a powerful reason for this.
If you will insist on coming up with an appropriate expository/argumentative strategy, you will force yourself to discover insights that will elude you if you confine yourself to more passive description. This is because the organizational framework of an expository/argumentative essay will be based on logical and causal relationships implicit in the material under discussion, rather than a chronologytaken over from the story. It is these logical and causal relationships that should govern the order in which you present the successive points that, together, make up your analysis as a whole. And it is these that show up in the transitions that you craft to point to the rationale for taking the turns that constitute the "trip" on which you are conducting the reader. But before you can build an edifice on the basis of such implicit logical and causal relationships, you have to arrive at a clear awareness of them yourself. In other words, going beyond retelling the story pushes you into a deeper understanding of the significance of the story.
See also Critical Concepts: Criticism and Critical Analysis
See also An explication of a sample student essay in critical analysis
Note 1. The etymology of "explicit" and "implicit" is worth noting. In contemporary English, these convey abstract concepts. Both come from Latin, where they originated in quite vivid concrete metaphors. The root plic- means "bend" or "fold," and by extension "layer." (In fact the English word fold like the modern German word Falten ("wrinkles") are Germanic cousins to this Latin morpheme.) One or another of these notions is at work, under different spellings, in a number of words with which you are quite familiar: complex, comply, complicit; ply wood, plexiglass; multiplication, multiply, multiple; duplex, double, duple, simple ("one-fold"); replication, reply; supplication, supply; etc..
Something that is implicit, then, is something "folded up inside" something (often, inside "itself"). Though present, it is not "out in plain view." Something that is explicit is something that is "folded out," so that (for example) it is disclosed, visible, evident. To explicate something (something already explicit) is to lay out what is folded up in (or layered behind) it. We begin with what is already explicit, exposed to view, openly said and bring to that condition what, in the text, is conveyed only indirectly, by means of the explicit. If we want a more specific concrete image still to remind us of all this, we can think of a bud on a stem as an example of something that is mostly "implicit": only the outer leaf is "explicit." When the bud blossoms, it performs a kind of "self-explication." If we want to see what's inside before this comes about, our "explication" of it would have to take the form of dissection. Return.
Note 2. An example of a fiction that is organized as exposition is Stanislaw Lem's "De Impossibilitate Vitae and De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi," which is a pretended review of two (non-existent) philosophical treatises. An example of a fiction that is organized as an argument is Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," which is a pretended pamphlet putting forward a solution to a pressing social problem. One approach open to us in analyzing these works as fiction is to treat them as dramatic monologues. As it happens, this will turn out to be more profitable with "A Modest Proposal" than with Lem's "story." One approach that promises to be worthwhile with Lem's piece is to consider it in the light of the author's own "review" of the collection of works (all of them reviews of non-existent books) within which it was published. Another is to consider the implications of the theories "under review" for the sensicality of traditional narrative practices.
In either case, though, the basic point about the difference between explication and analysis, as genres of discourse, remains valid. If we explicate these, we follow the order of details (sentences, rhetorical gestures, arguments) in the work under discussion. If we analyze them, we develop an expository-argumentative structure appropriate to the insights to which we are devoting our essay. In this case, the organization of the original will be argumentative (in Swift's work) or expository (in Lem's), and the organization of an analysis of either will be argumentative or expository or both -- some hierarchy of claims. But the heirarchy of claims that constitues the analysis will not be the same as the hierarchy of claims that constitutes the original. Why? Because the two essays (original and analysis of the original) will not be devoted to developing the same thesis. Return.
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