Quick writes provide one way for instructors and learners to find out just how much of what is being discussed and reviewed is being caught by the learner. In this strategy the instructor learners to take a moment and reflect upon a question or prompt related to what they are currently studying. The question may ask the learners to draw upon their background knowledge, make a prediction, give an analysis, relate a personal anecdote, take a stand on a particular issue, or visualize a circumstance. Along with the question you should give the learners a limited amount of time (two to five minutes) in which they free write a response.
For instance, you might ask the learners to reflect upon their last visit to a doctor and to consider all the aspects that a general practitioner is responsible for. In this case you are looking to use their background knowledge to activate this topic and give direction to the lesson. Some instructors like to use this as the first step in a think/pair/share activity. It allows individual learners to consolidate their thinking before they pair up and begin discussion. But quick writes can also be used to reflect upon on respond to new information. For instance, you might ask the learners to give their response to a video clip you presented on healthy food choices. Even just a walk through the classroom to quickly observe the student responses to this question would tell the instructor just how much learners related to what was being shown and if they caught the most important points of the presentation. These quick writes would likely also provide more questions to consider as a class. Quick writes can be done in face-to-face classrooms on paper, and in hybrid or online classrooms these writes can happen by setting up a forum in Moodle (you can choose to make it public or personal) or through many different polling or posting apps. Some instructors also use the chat for this, asking the students to flood the chat when their allotted writing time is up. The idea behind quick writes is to get the learners comfortable with writing and expressing their ideas. Quick writes can be used for assessment, but most instructors use them only for formative assessment. They provide an interesting window on your learners; you can learn much about their interests and personality through these quick and low-stress responses. But be warned, instructors who collect these “free-writes” to evaluate the learners and assign marks soon find out that the learner writing will become stiffer and less personal.
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AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
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