08.23.21Woolway: Making Writing Part of the Thinking Process
TLAC Chief Academic Office Erica Woolway has been reflecting on the role of writing… in classrooms and in learning. She shared this reflection:
Writing is incredibly important to us- as educators and parents but also as learners ourselves. We are constantly struck by how much we use writing as part of the thinking process. And our belief in writing impacts not just the advice we give teachers for their classrooms but how we run our own meetings. Anytime we pose a question to each other for discussion we inevitably ask people to write first: “Take one minute to write and then we’ll discuss (or brainstorm).”
We were reminded of this at a recent remote workshop on writing, and the take aways that participants had specifically on the power of Formative Writing—writing specifically designed to support thinking. They reflected on how powerful the Formative Writing opportunities were in our workshop and how little they ask their own students to write formatively throughout class, too often focusing on the summative writing that comes at the end of class (and is often squeezed out due to time).
So we wanted to share a few excerpts on the three types of writing from 3.0 that help inform this approach. These ideas were informed by Judith Hochman’s The Writing Revolution, in Reading Reconsidered, and are a driving force behind our ELA curriculum (which you can learn more about here):
“Formative Writing is writing in which students seek to decide rather than explain what they think. The purpose is to use writing as a tool to think: to develop and discover new insights rather than to justify an opinion they already have. In contrast, the purpose of summative writing is to explain or justify the writer’s opinion and often to include evidence to create a supporting argument. Summative writing says: Here is what I think and why. To complete a summative writing task, students must already know what they think and be ready to marshal evidence and select an appropriate structure to make a cogent argument.
Summative writing is probably the most common form of analytical writing done in schools, in part because it looks like—and therefore (we often think) must prepare—students for the sorts of questions they are asked on assessments.
Again, in summative writing you have to know what you think before you start; in formative writing the purpose is to find out.”
Here’s a gallery of summative and formative prompts from different subjects that we share in our Engaging Academics workshops (click here for our calendar of upcoming workshops!), placed side-by-side for comparison:
| Formative Prompts | Summative Prompts | |
| ELA | What might be the figs be symbolic of
in this chapter? What are some reasons they keep appearing? |
Explain the symbolism of the figs in the
chapter and explain what Munoz-Ryan was attempting to accomplish with this symbol. Make reference to at least three occasions in which the figs appear. |
| Math | Try to describe the relationship between the two pairs of lines. Give it a go. | What is the relationship between parallel and perpendicular lines? |
| Science | Let’s think in writing. Would you expect neurons to have a high or low surface area to volume ratio? Why? | Explain how neurons function. Be sure to reference specific details about their cellular design. |
| History | What events might the founders have been nervous about when they built the system of checks and balances? | Explain how the founders’ vision of checks and balances influences our governmental structure. |
| Early
Elementary |
How might Paddington be feeling in this moment? Why? | Based on this story, what are two character traits that describe Paddington? Support your answer with details from the text. |
| Arts | Take a stab at this question: What suggests the farmer is important in the painting? | Explain how the use of color and light show that the farmer is the central figure in the painting. |
In our workshops, we ask participants to reflect on the two types of writing and how teachers might think about balancing to the two in order to maximize ratio. Here are some reflections on that from 3.0:
Formative Prompts and Summative Prompts
“One thing you’ve probably noticed is the openness of the formative prompts. They ask for “some reasons” rather than “the reason” or “the reasons”—all of them, presumably. The change encourages students to consider more than one possible answer and implies that it’s hard to say how many reasons there might be. They ask questions for which it is hard to be wholly wrong as long as you are diligent and thoughtful, as in: “What strikes you about . . .” Perhaps the most important word in many formative prompts is the word “might.” What might the figs be symbolic of? Rather than: What are the figs symbolic of? Or: What ideas might the artist be attempting to convey with his choice of colors? “Might” makes it clear that goal is to explore, not to prove; the stakes are lowered.
The lowering of stakes can be powerful with writing. Putting words to page is intimidating, so it is understandable that many students may have trouble beginning the process. “I don’t know how to start,” they tell us. Often, perhaps, that’s because summative prompts set the bar so high. “Explain your opinion about X or Y.” There are Xs and Ys in the world I have been thinking about for years and still have not fully arrived at an opinion about. I hereby propose that the ability to think without deciding too early is a very good thing intellectually. A formative prompt lets you start with maybe. Maybe one reason is . . .
A few years ago, we discussed the idea of formative writing with Ashley LaGrassa, then an eighth-grade English teacher at Rochester Prep in Rochester, New York, and she decided to give it a try. After all, eighth grade might be one of the toughest years for getting students to open up in writing.
“The idea that a simple change of format might make my classroom feel safer for students, leading them to take risks and engage more deeply, was too alluring to pass up,” Ashley said, “and the result was one of the most joyful lessons of the year. My eighth graders jumped in to wrestle with challenging questions, pregnant with the possibility of multiple ‘right’ answers.” Afterwards she reflected on what worked and why.
The lesson focused on Alice Walker’s “Beauty: When the Other-Dancer is the Self ” and began with formative writing as part of the Do Now: “How might Alice Walker’s experiences have influenced her writing?”
“My hope in including the word “might” was to help students feel safe jumping in with thoughts rather than comprehensive answers,” she said. Students jumped in and she was happily surprised to see “twice as many hands as usual” offering to share their answers. On a later question, Reflect on the role of gender in Walker’s experience, she again found that “students went right to work. There was no flipping through the packet or rewriting of the question to pass time. Students began quickly jotting down their thoughts; seemingly, the sense of possibility within the question made students feel more comfortable with risk.”
The subsequent discussion too crackled to life. “Within moments, students were deeply analyzing the impact a scar discussed in the text had on Walker in light of her gender, moving from her specific experience to a message about society at large. By asking students for their reflections, the question invited students to share all thoughts and suggested a validity in a variety of responses. This encouraged them and prepared them to take the risks.”
Formative questions made writing a “low-risk adventure” in which students “didn’t always have to have a final argument about the theme to discuss the story.” You can see this play out in the video Arielle Hoo: Keystone. Arielle asks her students to write their “conjectures” to start their reflection on a problem. She is suggesting “We’re just thinking and experimenting with ideas at this point.” She says go and the class springs into action.
Ironically, students are more likely to have a strong final argument about the theme if they’d had time to wrestle with the idea formatively first. In other words, the argument isn’t that formative writing is “better” than summative writing, because it isn’t. Both are important and students need to be able to do both. Rather the argument is that formative writing is also necessary—if more likely to be overlooked—and that the two types of writing are synergistic in a dozen ways. For example, formative writing helps students engage in and care about the text so that they feel more vested in any argument they then decide to defend or explain in summative writing . . . which in turn helps them to understand what things they should seek to understand or figure out through formative writing.”
We believe in the power of Joan Didion’s quote – “I write to know what I think.” When you ask your class to write, you are therefore asking all of your students to think, and of course the same is true of adult learners. We therefore rely heavily on Formative Writing with the hope that in modeling techniques for teachers and leaders to experience them as adults, that they will experience the impact of the techniques on their own learning and be more likely to bring them to the classroom.
