✏️ Universal Writing Supports

For years I’ve applied the basics of They Say, I Say as a universal support for writing. Typically it lives on the back of my assignment sheet.

Yes, we talk structure.

Yes, we write first in other media.

Yes, I encourage writing about ideas rather than a five-paragraph structure.

Many kids write well beyond this template. I scale essays to individuals, and I’ve had many middle school students write four page essays about literature.

If you write every day, it’s not a big deal

But for some, simply seeing the form of the essay helps. I'm convinced essaying depends on robust mental models, both for the medium and the ideas themselves.

And yet mental models often need physical counterparts. We need to see what we mentally picture.

➡️ Would anyone be interested in a post about this approach?