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Begin exploring the stages of thinking by clicking the images below.
You can also learn more about ThinkWrite at ThinkWriteMBE.com/overview.
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Teachers: Use this guide to help you determine what stage of thinking would be most beneficial to your students.
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| If you notice… | Then leverage activities from this stage of thinking: |
|---|---|
| • Inaccurate facts or descriptions of source materials | |
| • A disconnect between the assignment goal and the student’s work | |
| • Failure to comply with a specified format | |
| • Misuse of key terminology or core ideas | Understand |
| • Overuse or overreliance on the ideas or words of other people’s works | |
| • Inability to make analogies or relate one idea to that of others | |
| • A disconnect between the student’s written submission and their personal goals | |
| • Missing data or information or ideas that one would expect based on previous learning or recent experience | Know Things |
| • Regurgitated solutions or overly typical responses to a problem | |
| • A lack of originality in the written assignment, despite accurate or thoughtful ideas | |
| • Weak associations between ideas | Mind Wander |
| • Inability to identify and/or use important ideas from source materials | |
| • Difficulty in making a personal connection to the writing | |
| • Tendency to skip over feedback or avoid making changes based on feedback | |
| • Jumps between one idea to another with no explicit connections | Reflect |
| • Illogical leaps between ideas or concepts | |
| • Disjointed writing or failure to see similarities and differences between parts of the written product | |
| • Difficulty in describing the relationship between multiple ideas | Map & Connect |
| • Trailing away from main point or main objective | |
| • Unorganized approach to sharing what are otherwise sound and related ideas | |
| • A struggle to convey the order and hierarchy of the written work | |
| • A weak opening and/or closing of ideas | Outline |
| • Written work that appears rushed or completed in one sitting | |
| • Missed deadlines and/or stressing about deadlines | |
| • A missing connection between the assignment and what the student hopes to achieve with it | Plan |
| • Missed opportunities to include key voices/authors on the topic | |
| • A mixture of good and questionable sources of information | |
| • Leaning on sources expressing only similar viewpoints to that of the author | |
| • Missing or mistaken factual material or inaccuracies in the use of domain-specific vocabulary or schema | Research |
| • Difficulty in conveying thoughts or ideas in written form despite clear communication in other modalities | |
| • An avoidance of writing, or preference to share out in other ways | Draft |
| • Trouble with tone or messaging of the written ideas | |
| • An overreliance on self-confirming evidence | |
| • Difficulty in separating main ideas from supporting details | |
| • Desire to please the teacher; writing for the teacher’s goals | Peer Exchange |
| • Revisions to the written work are minimal to none | |
| • Disengagement from the project after receiving feedback | |
| • A difference in reactions to feedback based on modality or who gives the feedback | |
| • Limiting response to feedback to correcting only marked errors and not finding the same or similar errors elsewhere | |
| • Limiting responses in feedback to only positive, “face-saving” feedback | Feedback & Feedforward |
| • A lot of unnecessary repetition or wordiness | |
| • Organizational issues | |
| • Evidence problems | |
| • Inappropriate transitions problems or gaps in transitions | |
| • Logical fallacies | |
| • Poor word choice or word choice inappropriate to audience or task | |
| • Inappropriate tone | |
| • Gaps in connecting the pieces (details) to the larger ideas (the whole) | Edit |
| • Haphazard revisions after feedback, or missed opportunities to step back and see how all the pieces go back together | |
| • Missing details or gaps in the connections across the main ideas | |
| • Writing that trails away from the point of the assignment or the student’s goals | Revise |
| • Poor word choice, misspellings, and many grammatical errors | Proofread |
| • A lack of unique voice in the student’s writing | |
| • The final grade is the student’s main reason for celebration (or feelings of failure) | |
| • Unmet potential for the written work to be shared beyond the assignment submission | Complete & Commence |
Table source: Tokuhama-Espinosa, T., Nazareno, J. R., & Rappleye, C. (2024). Writing, Thinking, and the Brain: How Neuroscience Can Improve Writing Instruction. Teachers College Press. 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027.