Five-Minute Teach (5MT) Database
The Five Minute Teach (5MT) Database for writing-intensive courses in STEM was developed as a resource for teaching assistants and includes a variety of short lessons to help build students writing skills. With limited time to teach writing, these active learning lessons are great tools to address a very specific learning objective in approximately five minutes. This database is an Open Educational Resource (OER), which means that contributions to the database will carry a CC BY 4.0 license and can be shared and adapted for any purpose with proper attribution (including credit to creator, link to license, and indication of changes made, if any).
Submitting a 5MT Lesson to the Database
The database relies on submissions from graduate teaching assistants at the University of Georgia but we welcome submissions from other sources. If you would like to submit a 5MT to be published in the database, please complete the Lesson Plan Template in the main folder. Then, follow the link below for upload. The submission form will be checked periodically for new contributions.
The 5MT Database
From here you can find the corresponding folders and subfolders of the 5MT Database. If no link is provided, please browse the parent folder using the headers to guide you.
Choosing Appropriate Literature Sources
Identifying Scientific Peer Reviewed Articles by Annie Rich
Review Articles vs Primary Literature
Choosing Appropriate Writing Conventions
Using Paraphrasing vs Quoting to Avoid Plagiarism
Language of Scientific Writing by Shelly Samet
When to Use Passive vs Active Voice in Scientific Writing
Using Orientation to Improve Mathematical Writing by Jason Joseph
Developing Assessment Questions by Nicole Lynn-Bell
Distinguishing Research Study Types
Observational vs Experimental Studies by Ashton Griffin
Identifying Scientific Paper Sections
Distinguishing Sections of a Scientific Paper by Mariel Pfeifer
Checklist for Developing Figure Legends
Choosing the Appropriate Figure to Highlight Results
Identifying Figure Components and Placement
Information Needed for Making Clear Figures by Ashley Earley
Making Stand Alone Figure Legends by John Vinson
Making a Table from Experimental Data
Identifying Good Introductory Sentences by Ahmed Hikal
Identifying Necessary Content for a Scientific Introduction by Hannah Choi
Re-Writing Methods to Improve Quality by Tyler Miyawaki
Re-Writing Methods to make Concise Statements by Aimee Williams
Writing Methods from Bullets to Paragraphs
Writing Repeatable Methods by James Goodin
Writing Results, Discussion, and Conclusions
Choosing the Proper Word Choice for Scientific Results by John McGreevy
Distinguishing Conclusions and Results of a Scientific Paper by Aaron DeLeo
Making Claims Based on Evidence by Zachery Jarrell
Writing a Hypothesis or Prediction
Writing a Clear, Concise, and Testable Hypothesis by Callie Oldfield
Writing a Measurable Hypothesis
Writing a Testable Scientific Research Question
Did you find what you were looking for?
We’d love to get your honest feedback to assess the effectiveness of this tool. Any information to help us further develop this resource to better serve our visitors will be much appreciated. Please follow the link below to a short 3-5 minute survey to tell us about your experience.
Database Editors
Lindsey Harding, Ph.D.
Director of the Writing Intensive Program
Franklin College of Arts & Sciences
University of Georgia
A. Kelly Lane
Former Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Genetics
University of Georgia
Nicole Lynn-Bell
Current Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Microbiology
University of Georgia
Page authored by Nicole Lynn-Bell, Fall 2018.