How should we use quickwrites, though? For as helpful as they are, they can quickly become a tired technique, eliciting groans from our students like creamed spinach on a 7-year old’s dinner plate.
The trick is to treat using the strategy -- or any strategy for that matter -- like a routine at the gym. Anyone who has worked out seriously knows that when a person continues to do the same exercise over and again for more than a couple weeks, progress plateaus and there are next to no gains. The body must be shocked into progress; so it is beneficial to change up the workout continually to work the muscle groups in different ways.
The brain is really no different. Too much of the same thing will cause boredom, no matter how interesting it may be, and progress plateaus. Like our various muscle groups, our brains need to be shocked into doing the work -- they must be engaged with novel approaches to the material. This means that while the strategy may stay the same, the approach doesn’t have to.
Classroom teachers know how to best manipulate their lesson plans to engage students, and obviously each discipline will have its own way of doing things. Regardless, here are some universal ideas for how to use quickwrites in novel ways.
Break up notetaking
The human brain is always seeking contrast to stay engaged (Sylwester and Cho, 1992): music that vacillates between quiet and loud, art that plays with light and dark, movies that punctuate the routine with high drama. This is especially true in the classroom. There are always going to be activities that are not very stimulating, but they should be contrasted with highly engaging activities.
One of the most repetitive, dull activities, is lecture-based notetaking. This sort of instruction is a necessity at times -- students need to learn how to listen and take notes. Brain research shows that a lecture should be kept brief and to the point as the brain begins to lose focus after a short amount of time, between 10-20 minutes, depending on the age of the child. (Khan, 2012) And in our digital era, there is some research to suggest that student attention spans are growing even shorter. The average attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds, whereas in 2015 it is 8.25 seconds. (Statistic Brain, 2015)
So, consider breaking up those lectures with 2 minutes of quickwriting as the beginning of a think-pair-share activity. Students can have their brains re-engaged, and teachers can ensure the information was received and processed. Putting in the social element also helps students to see if anything was missed, and gives them opportunities to take ownership of the information by collaborating.
Provide quickwriting choices
No one has the same learning style. Howard Gardner’s (1983) research into multiple intelligences revealed that there are eight different ways in which people relate to and learn about their realities.
- Verbal-linguistic
- Logical-mathematical
- Visual-spatial
- Bodily-kinesthetic
- Musical-rhythmic
- Naturalist
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
Quickwriting lends itself to the verbal-linguistic learner, but there are ways to shake up the activity to appeal to different intelligences. For example, a logical-mathematical learner can be encouraged to create a chart or a graphic organizer to help organize information. Naturalists could write about specific props or symbols that help them remember the information. And interpersonal learners could write a dialog, or consider the information from alternative points-of-view. Consider using a variety of prompts that engage different intelligences.
When requesting a quickwrite, especially as a means to tap prior knowledge, offering these sorts of choices provide students a variety of access points to a curriculum that may seem too difficult to understand.
Collaborative quickwrites
Who says that quickwriting has to be a solitary activity? Just as students can collaborate to write an essay, create a presentation, or design posters, they can just as easily collaborate to perform a simple quickwrite.
As with any grouping activity, each student would have to be responsible for his/her own part. But once that is determined and explained, the quickwrite becomes a constructive process in which students quickly discuss and process integral information and concepts.
Quickwrite journal
At first, many students -- especially struggling writers -- may not write much when assigned a quickwrite. Returning to the gym analogy, no one is benching 200lbs. upon their first trip to the gym. Strength has to be built through work. Writing endurance is built similarly, and just as most gym rats carry a workout journal, it would behoove our students to have a quickwriting journal to monitor their own progress.
A quickwriting journal serves a couple functions: 1) it provides additional study notes for students to review, and 2) it creates opportunities for self-reflection. A student who begins the year writing only 35-40 words in three minutes may be amazed to see that s/he is writing 100+ by the end of first semester. Think about how empowering and confidence-boosting that could be. When a student can see concrete evidence of their progress, that goes a long way to building the self-efficacy we long for them to have.
Certainly there are more ways to integrate quickwrites into a lesson plan that can kickstart a student’s mind in novel, engaging ways. In the comments section, please share some of your great ideas.
Sources
"Attention Span Statistics." Statistic Brain. Statistic Brain Research Institute, 2 Apr. 2015. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.
Fisher, Douglas, and Nancy Frey. Improving Adolescent Literacy: Content Area Strategies at Work. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York, NY: Basic, 2011. Print.
Khan, Salman. "Why Long Lectures Are Ineffective." Time. Time Warner, 2 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.
Sylwester, Robert, and Joo-Yun Cho. "What Brain Research Says About Paying Attention." Educational Leadership 50.4 (1992): 71-75. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.
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