Low-Stakes Writing: Writing to Learn, Not Learning to Write (Transcript)

Teacher: So what I want you to do right now is in your notebook write down at least one thing you know, and one thing you don’t, or one question you have.

Because we do low stakes writing, I have seen my students become more critical thinkers. I’ve seen them become less afraid to make mistakes. They’re pushing each other and themselves to think about things a little more deeply.

Meghan Rosa: All right, ladies and gents, we’re going to start our writing. Begin.

Teacher: Every class, pretty much every day, you will find kids writing.

J.J.: We write in English, Science, actually, no. We write in every single class.

Stefano: We do writing daily here in our math class. We use writing to put down our ideas and where we’re at so far and where we can go from there.

Teacher: So jot down what it is that you’re looking for, because that can kind of be like the question that you’re trying to answer, you know?

James Kobialka: In numeracy, in history, in English, in art, you’ll see them writing thoughts, writing opinions, giving people comments.

Dan St. Louis: I had a student once say to me, “I never write because I’m always wrong.” He’d gone through all of elementary school and he was really used to a lot of red marks crossing out his misspelled words. For us, you don’t have to have mastered spelling before you can think deeply about a novel or a play. We’re going to do a lot of low stakes writing where, you know what, I don’t care necessarily about the spelling. Here’s an interesting issue, here’s an interesting problem. Let’s just think about that on paper for two minutes.

Teacher: Describe or write about two things that you can do to improve your group’s work today.

Meghan Rosa: Structure is obviously so important to a piece of writing, but if you start with the structure, then you limit the ideas that you come up with.

Whatever statement you’re focusing on, you can write any notes that you think will be helpful for later.

We’re working on argument right now.

The six steps for the–

They did a little bit of research on two different topics: should homework be banned, and do schools need to have a police presence?

We’re going to start our writing. We have seven minutes: begin.

We use seven minute writes close to daily for a couple of reasons. It’s an idea generator. Like, if you only have seven minutes, it’s just about like getting out a bunch of ideas.

Student: I said I think that schools should be provided with cops only if they have a Taser, handcuffs and a club.

Meghan Rosa: It’s definitely important to me that they are sharing it right away, so that they can teach each other to be better writers.

Anna: I wrote that I agree that we shouldn’t have homework, because we have other things to do at home. For example, since I translate, I am busy and my body gets really stressed.

The seven minute write, which I really like because that gives me time to just like spill out all my thinking, and like, I don’t have time to stop and rethink. Your writing’s not always going to be perfect. You just have to pour out all your thoughts at first and then re-fix it later.

Teacher: Don’t forget to write down your observations, what do you see, what do you notice?

In seventh grade science class, we use interactive notebooks. With the interactive notebook, they are essentially writing their own middle school textbook. And low stakes writing is integral to that notebook. As we go through the year, we do an input and an output.

How many hydrogen, carbon, oxygen?

And the input is generally class notes, which are very, very, very structured at the beginning of the year. And the output is always reflecting on it or doing your own version of it or doing diagrams to explain it. So on one side, it’s in academic language, and on the other side, it is in their own language.

Isaiah: It helps me like start to put stuff in my own words, not have to get help all the time and to be independent.

Sherenity: We’ve been learning about molecules and atoms and mass and stuff. So it’s like, you understand it yourself, so now you can explain it in your own words.

From our vision, I said atoms make up everything that has mass in this world. Atoms does not make up energy.

Teacher: Love it.

Student: Atoms make up mass and like, use it to build.

Dan St. Louis: The low stakes writing is part of the instruction itself. It’s writing to learn, not to show what you already learned.

Teacher: You get a student generated definition or a student generated answer which everyone in the class can then learn from.

Student: Wait, what did you write there, Dicky?

Student: Chemical bonds are so skinny and they hold mass.

Dan St. Louis: Low stakes writing is a way of valuing student voice and student ideas and it has carryover into all different areas. It will foster better discussions, it will foster more thought, it will foster engagement of everyone in the room.

Anna: Our parents might ask why we stay up so late. It’s because of homework.