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IWT!HANDOUTS!
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Writing'to'Read'
Writing'to'Read'in'the'Zones'
Writing'from'Images'
Ways'of'Responding'
Text'Rendering'
Radical'Revision'
Process'Writing'
Collaborative'Learning'
Principles'of'Writing'and'Sequencing'Prompts'
Informal'Writing'Uses'and'Kinds'
Believing'and'Doubting'
Dialectical'Response'Notebook'
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 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Writing to Read

The objective of writing to read is to help students explore a text they are reading by writing
probatively  about  it.  The  structure  of  this  is  a  modified  “loop  writing”  sequence,  derived  from  
Peter  Elbow’s  Writing with Power (Oxford, 1981).

Writing  in  response  to  someone  else’s  written  language  is  a  different  experience  from  writing  a  
personal  or  “familiar”  essay  on  one’s  own  initiative.  We  need  to  hear  the  other  person’s  
language, enter into dialogue with it, recognize whatever larger “poly-logue”  it  may  be  part  of,
find a voice appropriate to this conversation—all the while finding language of our own to talk
about the subject at hand, so that the text does not preempt our thinking.

We  need  to  recognize  in  the  text  (and  in  the  “community  of  discourse”  to  which  it  belongs):  (1)  
questions it pursues; (2) assumptions it makes; (3) allusions: what goes without saying; and (4)
special jargon that is shorthand for a lot of prior conversation. It is a tricky business—attending
to  another’s  language while forming our own.

Possible  “loops”  or  probes  to  begin  thinking  about:

1. First thoughts about the text
2. Questions
3. Find and respond to
a. A passage important to you
b. A passage you think is important for the author
4. Dialogue with the author
5. Vary the audience and explain
6. Record your own reading process: tell the story of your reading of the text
7. Agree first, then disagree with the author (believe/disbelieve)
8. The text reminds you of?
9. What’s  lurking?  Not  said  in  the  text?
10. The  author’s  prejudices?  Your  prejudices?
11. What question is this text answering? What problem is it addressing?
12. Last things first: starting from the conclusion, what does the text say?

—Prepared by Paul Connolly and associates from the Institute for Writing & Thinking,
Bard College

2012
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Writing to Read in the Zones

1. Make a circle or oval in the center of the page and draw a rectangle at the bottom (the
larger the paper the better).
2. Divide the remainder of the page into eight zones in which you will write. The zones
should be roughly equal in size and should fill the remainder of the page.
3. Number the zones.
4. In the center, write down the author, title, and the concepts you are most interested in
exploring in relation to the text.

Zone 1 – First thoughts: Write down your thoughts about the text in general or the concepts
you wrote in the circle, or write about the title if you find it significant or intriguing.

Zone 2 – Pointing: Select a striking sentence, phrase, word or image from any part of the text.
Fill up the zone with writing about it or from it.

Zone 3 – Analysis/Close Reading: Pick  a  passage  that’s  important  to  the  way  you  understand  or  
experience the text. Which words or phrases are most central to the meaning and/or beauty of
this passage? Why is this passage important to the text as a whole?

Zone 4 – Believing and Doubting: Find a central statement or assumption the author makes and
first believe (agree) and then doubt (disagree). Or find a portion of the text that you find
challenging and write your way into some understanding of it.

Zone 5 – Making Inferences: What question is this text answering? What makes it speak?

Zone 6 – Summarizing: What happens or what does the text say?

Zone 7 – Evidence: Examples, facts, illustrations, statistics, anecdotes, definitions, comparisons,

quotations, reasons, images, metaphors, similes, symbols, words, or structures—which of these

2012
– OVER –
seem  important  to  the  argument,  the  author’s  intention,  or  the  overall  effect  and/or  meaning  of  
the text? Explain.

Zone 8 – Making connections: What texts, voices, memories, experiences come to mind as you
read and write? How do they illuminate your reading?

Rectangle – Now  read  what  you  wrote.  What’s  the  most  important  or  central  thing  you’re  
noticing or saying about this text? What does your writing in the different locations add up to?
“Sum  up  this  main  point…in  a  sentence.  Write  it  [in  the  rectangle].  It’s  got  to  stick  its  neck  out,  
not  just  hedge  and  wonder.  [It  should  be]  something  that  can  be  quarreled  with…This  summing-
up  process  should  be  difficult:  it  should  tell  you  more  than  you  already  know.”1 Use this
sentence to begin a draft of a short essay about this text.

—Prepared by associates from the Institute for Writing & Thinking, Bard College

1
Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Writing from Images

PURPOSE
To write an essay in a natural, real voice; on your own informed authority; with the conviction
and confidence that arise from attentive reading, creative thinking and personal engagement with
text.
“Fundamentally,  the  process of understanding a work implies a re-creation of it, an
attempt to grasp completely the structured sensations and concepts through which the
author seeks to convey the quality of his sense of life. Each must make a new synthesis of
these elements with his own nature, but it is essential that he evoke those components of
experience  to  which  the  text  actually  refers.”
Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration

PROCEDURE
I. Reading:
a) Read the text at least twice, silently and aloud. Hear the voice of the text and begin to
form an oral interpretation.
b) Before and during class, render parts of the text aloud with various purposes: (1) for
basic,  clear  understanding;;  (2)  to  reinforce  what  you  take  to  be  the  author’s  intended  
emphasis; (3) to dramatize the power of the text; (4) to exaggerate or parody the
voice.

II. Writing:
a) Putting the text aside, list the images you remember. Circle three significant images
you will write about. (2 min.)
b) Describe the first image. (5 min.)
c) State what it means to you. (3 min.)
d) Repeat for the 2nd and 3rd images. (8 min. each)
NOTE: Write on one side only. Look back at the text, but write also from your
remembered experience of it.
e) 4th paragraph: State what these three images have in common. What theme(s) runs
through what you have written? (8 min.)
f) 5th paragraph: What assertion do you want to make about the text, based on the three
images? (8 min.)
g) 6th paragraph: What do you like about the text, and why? (4 min.)
h) 7th paragraph: What do you dislike, and why? (4 min.)

NOTE: After (a) and (c) it is valuable in a group to hear read aloud what others have
written.

III. Structuring:
a) Either cut and paste your paragraphs or number them in an order than seems
appropriate to you. Or you might follow this order (10 min.):

2012
– OVER –
 1. Assertion
2. What you like
3. Three images with meanings
4. What you dislike
5. What these images have in common
b) Consider this order for a moment: Do you need to make any changes or additions?

IV. Revision:
a) Write in whatever transitions seem necessary to give this first draft some more unity
and coherence. Shape it a bit, smoothing the seams between paragraphs, reorganizing
as necessary, and omitting obvious irrelevancies. (20 min.)
b) Read the draft to a friend, and ask your listener to respond by: (1) pointing, without
discussion, to memorable phrases or ideas; (2) saying back to you what your listener
has heard, in an inquisitive tone that invites you to elaborate; (3) summarizing, in
skeletal form, the primary assertions (and supporting evidence) they have heard you
present. (40 min.)
c) Revise,  considering  insights  gained  from  your  listener’s  response.
NOTE:  Avoid  debate.  Listeners  should  try  to  assist  the  writers’  understanding  rather  
than to recast the argument to fit their own understanding of the text. (45 min.)

V. Finish:
Edit for mistakes. Type or copy over. Proofread. (45 min.)

VI. Celebrate:
According to taste and time. Hear finished essays read aloud.

WRITING TIME: Approximately 3½ hours. Steps I-III should be completed in one unbroken
block of time. Steps IV-VI may be done at your convenience (and allowing time for incubation is
a  good  idea).  NOTE:  The  entire  “PROCEDURE”  should  be  modeled  in  class  before  it  is  
attempted independently.

—Prepared by associates from the Institute for Writing & Thinking, Bard College
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Text Rendering/Collaborative Reading

“Words  mean  more  than  what  is  set  down  on  paper. It takes the
human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”
—Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Text Rendering/Collaborative Reading provides  a  way  of  “speaking  about”  a  text  using  the  
words of the text itself. Whether this practice is used with poetry or with carefully chosen
passages from fiction, non-fiction, etc., the intent is the same: to animate and experiment with its
language using this  “human  voice.” As a group:

1. Read the text so that it becomes clear to the listener, so that its meaning climbs into the
head of the listener.

2. Read  the  text  to  reinforce  what  you  take  to  be  the  author’s  intended  emphasis.  Read  it  in  
the  “right”  voice in which it  “ought”  to  be  read.  

3. Read the text to dramatize its power.

4. Read the text to exaggerate or parody its voice

5. Read the text in voices inappropriate to the text—a good way to find out what is the voice
of the author.

6. Read the text as if you were the author.

7. Read the text (particularly for poems and short pieces) backwards. Backwards line by
line, word by word, and syllable by syllable.

8. Reconstruct the text as jazz. In this type of text rendering, the entire group reads,
sometimes all at once, sometimes individually, with people joining in and dropping out as
they hear the music being constructed. The text is not necessarily read in order; lines and
phrases can be repeated, even heard as question and answer from different people. The
“performance”  begins with one person starting and ends when the group feels the piece
has reached a natural closure. This type of text rendering is particularly good for seeing
thematic and rhetorical patterns, for heightening the living sense of the work, for
allowing the group to take responsibility for recreating the text.

9. Read the text as answers to questions posed by the group. Someone asks a question of the
text, and the appropriate passages, lines, or phrases are read in response.

2012
– OVER –
 10. Read the text to emphasize its thematic or structural or grammatical patterns. Determine
beforehand what themes/rhetorical devices/grammatical patterns seem important, then
assign one to three people to each theme/device/pattern. Each small group underlines the
passages relevant to their idea, then the text is read out loud by one person with these
smaller groups chiming in simultaneously as their underlined passages occur. This is
tricky to do at first, but provides a wonderful way of seeing the relationship of textual
patterns. This can be done as a grammatical exercise (for either English or foreign
languages) or as a thematic exercise.

—Prepared by Paul Connolly and associates from the Institute for Writing & Thinking,
Bard College
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Process Writing and Metacognitive Thinking

Various perceptual, emotional, and cultural blocks interfere with our freedom to explore and
manipulate ideas, observed James Adams in Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas
(Norton, 1980: 2nd edition). His list of emotional blocks includes:

1. Fear of taking a risk, making a mistake, failing

2. Low tolerance for ambiguity: overriding desire for order and security, fear of confusion
or chaos
3. Preference for judging, not generating, ideas
4. Tension: inability to relax,  incubate,  “sleep  on  it”
5. Lack of challenge: problems fail to engage interest
6. Inflexibility: inability to redefine challenge, to see a larger problem, to make the work
one’s  own
7. Excessive zeal: over-motivation to succeed quickly,
8. Undeveloped access to all areas of imagination and all tools of thinking, inability to
change tools
9. Lack of imaginative control
10. Inability to distinguish reality from fantasy

When students stand back from their work and think about their own thinking (metacognition)
and record in writing their process of writing an essay, working on a mathematical problem,
conducting a lab experiment, or analyzing a social issue, they often discover similar blocks in
their thinking—which they can begin to avoid:

 A tendency to create and criticize ideas simultaneously: to edit and correct work even as
generative  thinking  is  beginning,  trying  to  get  the  “right  answer”  quickly
 Fear of audience: expectation of harsh external standards and of being judged severely
 An unspoken limiting sense of task, of what are permissible, appropriate, possible
procedures for doing a job
 A sense of insufficient time,  of  lacking  “the  illusion  of  infinite  time”  in  which  creative  
work happens
 Resistance (often with good reason) to  an  “assigned”  task, inability to take responsibility
for  modifying  it,  making  it  one’s  own
 Premature desire for closure that precludes adding, changing, expanding, gathering ideas,
or  revising  one’s  work
 A solitary sense,  derived  from  the  isolated  character  of  much  mental  work,  that  “we  
perish  each  alone,”  not  knowing  whether  our  problems  and  anxieties  are  unique  or  
common

When students allow themselves to observe and record their own learning behavior in process
writing; when they explore ideas tentatively in probative language; when they expect to make
changes; when they look for meaning and order to emerge from the work process itself; when

2012
– OVER –
they trust that the very acts of thinking and writing help them to think and compose; when they
hear the process writing of other students and realize they are not alone, students work more
easily, creatively, and critically.

Three  “generic”  questions  for  process  writing  are:

1. Past: How did you do what you did? A closely detailed report?
2. Present: What is your present sense of it? What  works,  what  doesn’t?
3. Future: If you had more time, what would you do next?

—Prepared by Paul Connolly and associates from the Institute for Writing & Thinking,
Bard College, 1992: revised, 2011
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Collaborative Learning
COLLABORATIVE WORK
1. (a) Form groups of 4-5,  (b)  choosing  a  “Recorder”  to  report  back  for  each  group  to  the  
whole class and (c) reading the text under study aloud, without discussion, to become
familiar with it. (5 min.)
2. Pause for everyone  to  write  about  three  questions  or  “prompts.” (10 min.)
3. (a)  Hear  each  person’s  response  read  aloud,  around  the  group,  without  discussion.  (10  
min.)
(b)  In  conversation,  seek  “consensus”  and  “dissensus”—defined as the most everyone in
the group can agree to believe and what its members agree must remain in doubt. This
conversation may follow hearing responses to each question or after responses to all the
questions,  as  each  group  prefers.  End  by  reviewing  the  Recorder’s  sense  of  
consensus/dissensus, to test that it reflects the sense of the group. (20 min.)
4. Groups report to the whole class and, through continuing conversation, seek a sharper
sense of consent/dissent both within the class and between the class and the larger
“discourse  community.”  (15  min.) TOTAL TIME: 60+ min.

COLLABORATIVE QUESTIONS
Reflective  practitioners  make  knowledge  through  “reflective  conversation  with  the  materials  of  a  
situation,”  suggests  Donald  Schon  in  The Reflective Practitioner (Basic Books, 1983). Good
questions begin such conversation. When creating questions for the group to use as the basis for
focused freewriting, keep the following in mind:
1. Ask no more than three sequenced questions, brief, not over-determined (leading to a
single answer), carefully phrased.
2. Questions may be odd-angled, even ambiguous, giving students permission to interpret
and clarify the questions, as well as to respond to them.
3. Questions may be complex, seeking reflective understanding, not simple information, and
at least one of them, the first, may make a personal connection with the text.

COLLABORATIVE PROCESS
When first introducing collaborative learning, ask students to write and talk metacognitively
about the process:
1. What happened as you discussed the text? What did you learn? From whom?
2. Describe  your  role  in  the  group.  How  did  you  feel  about  it?  Describe  another’s  role  and  
how you felt about that.
3. What was the effect of seeking consensus and dissensus?
4. Describe  my  teacher’s  role.

Task is everything in collaborative teaching: forming groups; choosing textual passages that are
challenging yet manageable; posing questions and writing prompts; timing activities.

—Prepared by Ken Bruffee and associates from the Institute for Writing & Thinking,
Bard College

2012
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Principles of Writing & Sequencing Prompts

1. “All  there  is  to  thinking  is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you
weren’t  noticing,  which  makes  you  see  something  that  isn’t  even  visible.”
—Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

Ask first about what is noticeable; then, about what is peripherally visible; finally, about
what is invisible (i.e., interpretive and evaluative questions about meaning and worth).

2. Three is a good number of questions; four are too many and two are too skimpy.

3. Make a personal connection with the first question, inviting some writing not necessarily
about the self but out of the self, i.e., some writing that is invested, engaged, subjective.

4. Emily Dickinson begins a poem:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –

Success in Circuit lies

Particularly the first time, ask an odd-angled question that relaxes the imagination.

5. Never ask a question to which you know the answer. Knowing an answer is okay, but
questions should be genuinely inquiring, capable of fresh, multiple answers, and not testing
what  is  on  the  teacher’s  mind.

6. Invite translation—questions that require explaining something, for example, by analogy or

by shift of audience.

7. Ask experimental, not empirical questions—questions that probe and test their environment,
rather than only gathering data. John Dewey, in The Quest for Certainty, observes that
science is often mistakenly associated with empiricism, rather than with experimentation.
Experimentation turns the key of a question in the lock of the world; what opens is
knowledge.

8. Are  there  “generic”  prompts  that  might  be  adapted  to  many  purposes?  Yes,  for  example:  
“What  do  you  need  to  believe  for  it  to  seem  true  that…?”—a question that asks about the
warrants supporting a claim (to borrow Stephen  Toulmin’s  language  from  The Uses of
Argument).

—Prepared by Paul Connolly and associates from the Institute for Writing & Thinking, Bard
College

2012
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Informal Writing: Uses and Kinds

USES
Informal Writing is done both in preparation for, and quite independently of, formal writing
assignments in a course. It is freewriting, unconstrained by any need to appear correctly in
public. It is not yet arranging, asserting, arguing. It is still reflecting and questioning. This is
probative, speculative, generative thinking that is written in class or at home to develop the
language of learning. It may not always be read by a teacher. Generally, it is not graded. Parts of
it are often heard in class, but as a means of collaborative learning, not of individual testing. Its
basic purpose is to help students to become independent, active learners by creating for
themselves the language essential to their personal understanding. Specifically, informal written
language serves:

1. To develop abilities: the abilities to define, classify, summarize; to question; to

deconstruct complex patterns; to generate evaluation criteria; to establish inferences; to
imagine hypotheses; to analyze problems; to identify procedures.

2. To develop methods: for example, methods of close, inquisitive, reactive reading; of

recording and reporting data (observing); of organizing and structuring data into
generalizations; of formulating theories; and, most importantly, of recognizing and
applying  the  “methods”  themselves.

3. To develop knowledge: knowledge about central concepts in a course, but also, for
example, knowledge  about  one’s  own  problem-solving, thinking, learning, language;
about knowledge itself (“metacognition”); about the broad aims and exact methods of a
discipline.

4. To develop attitudes: for example, attitudes toward learning, knowing oneself and one’s  
work; toward mistakes and errors; toward the knowledge and opinions of others; the
attitudes that affect behaviors and, therefore, aptitudes.

5. To develop communal learning: encouraging, for example, open exploration and

discovery in a community of inquiry, rather than isolated competition; to promote
“connected,”  not  separated,  teaching and learning; to develop active listening; to teach
through tasks, rather than just through data; and, finally, to locate the motivation for
learning  not  in  the  “relevance”  of  the  subject or in the performance of the teacher but in
the social dynamic of the learning community.

6. To develop, in summary, general capacities for learning: the ability to question; to

create problems (as well as solutions); to wonder; to think for oneself while working
with others.

2012 – OVER –
 KINDS
1. Freewriting. To become centered, present for the learning that is about to begin,
grounding out the static we bring to class—time to breathe, hear oneself think.  What’s  on  
your mind that needs acknowledgement, to be set aside for the moment?

2. Focused freewriting. All reflective, probative, speculative writing, freewritten yet

focused, that explores a term, problem, issue, question openendedly. First thoughts on a
subject, casting a wide net of inquiry. May be used to initiate or conclude a class
discussion or, mid-class, to focus a discussion that is confused or lacks energy: What are
we learning?

3. Attitudinal writing. Focused freewriting expressing the attitudes that influence aptitudes
for learning.  How  do  you  feel  about…?  What  do  you  bring  to  this  reading,  issue, or
subject? What difficulties did you have with the last assignment? Where are you stuck?
What is most difficult for you at this point? What questions do you have? What have you
valued most in the course? What more or different do you need to know or do?

4. Metacognitive process writing. Examining how and why you acted (or will act) in a
situation—done before or after reading an assignment, taking an exam, working on a
problem, writing a paper, thinking about an issue. Anticipating and observing one’s  own
learning behaviors, in order to become more autonomous, less passively reliant on the
information and authority of teachers and texts.

5. Narrative writing. Stories, related to what one is thinking about—one’s own thinking.
Collecting all that one thinks—thoughts, feelings, memories, associations, biases.
Personal, subjective, particular writing and holistic thinking, done prior to organizing
linear discourse.

6. Explaining errors. On a test or homework—a  form  of  “process  writing”  (#4) that helps
students and teachers recognize where learning went wrong, and how and why.

7. Listing questions. Another form of  “process  writing” that helps students and teachers
recognize where learning went wrong, and how and why.

8. Creating problems. Rather than solutions, defining problems and  issues  of  one’s  own  in  
the class.

9. Quotation, paraphrase, summary. What was noticeable in a reading or class?

10. Defining. One’s  own  definitions,  however  imprecise  initially, used to develop conceptual
understanding in a way that memorization of textbook terms does not attempt.

11. Writing to read. Double-entry or  “dialectical”  notebook: recording and reporting what a
reading says and, in a facing column or page, responding to the text. Convergent and
divergent thinking. Noticing what both the reader and the author of the text think.
Dialectical notebooks integrate attitudinal writing, questioning, summarizing, and process
writing.

12. Learning logs, microthemes, collaborative problem solving—this list only begins to
suggest possibilities.

—Prepared by Paul Connolly and associates of the Institute for Writing & Thinking, Bard College
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Believing and Doubting

PURPOSE

To introduce students to the complexity of argument and the multiple sides of issues as well as to
the importance of suspension of judgment until the consequences of a position have been
thoroughly explored. This is a useful strategy in conjunction with a close reading assignment, a
dialectical notebook, or on its own in connection with students’  writing.  

PROCEDURE (This should be modeled in the large group.)

1. Students each write a concise statement of their position on an issue or text.

2. Working in small groups, students read their statements for the following group response:

a. Believing or operating on the philosopher’s  “principle of charity.” Group

members offer arguments, information, analogies, examples, references, and
sources  in  support  of  the  student’s  statement. Another way to introduce this part
of the strategy is to ask, “What would have to be true in order to believe this
position?

b. Doubting  or  devil’s  advocacy.  The  group  now  assists  the  student  in  learning  how
this position may be attacked by offering counter-arguments, examples, etc.

ALTERNATIVE PRACTICE

1. Students write a concise statement of their position on the board. Working in the whole
group,  students  first  “believe”  and  then  “doubt”  each  assertion. In this way, students learn
from  hearing  each  other’s  responses.  

2. Working with a selection from a difficult text—to which the student might be preparing
to write a response—each student writes her belief and doubt and shares this in a small
group. After writing  and  hearing,  the  student  writes,  “Where is your thinking now? What
do  you  need  to  know?”  

—The inspiration for this practice comes from Peter Elbow's essay, "Methodological
Doubting and Believing: Contraries in Inquiry," in his book Embracing Contraries, New
York: Oxford University Press (1986).

2012
 INSTITUTE FOR WRITING & THINKING
Bard College PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 Phone 845-758-7484 E-mail [email protected]
www.writingandthinking.org

Dialectical Response Notebooks

PURPOSE
To have students interact with a difficult text and with one another through writing as a mode of
critical thinking.

MATERIALS
(1) Brief text pertaining to issues or ideas you are treating in class. The text you choose should
be a challenging one. (2) Notebook paper divided into three columns widthwise.

PROCEDURE
(50 minute class session) Assign text the night before asking students to underline and/or
annotate what they find interesting and puzzling, as well as any aspects of the material you wish
to stress. Tell them to look up in the dictionary any  words,  names,  places  they  don’t  recognize.  
Alternatives: this could be done in class at the end of the period the day before, either as reading
or as oral text rendering.  (See  IWT  handout  “Text  Rendering/Collaborative Reading.”). In class,
have students choose two or three brief passages in the text to comment on as follows:

After numbering the chosen passages in the margin of the text

1. Comment: Place corresponding number in the left-most column of the notebook and
write comment. Continue until all numbered passages are commented on.

2. Response: Students now exchange both texts and notebooks with a partner. Each student
responds to the numbered portion of their partner’s  comments  in  the  middle  column.

3. Reply: Partners return texts and notebooks to one another and reply to the responses in
the third column, exchanging notebooks a final time to read replies.

COMMENT RESPONSE REPLY

1. ________________ 1. _______________ 1. _______________
2. ________________ 2. _______________ 2. _______________
3. ________________ 3. _______________ 3. _______________
Etc. Etc. Etc.

This procedure can, of course, be continued for as long as time allows within a class period, with
the exchange moving on to second or third pages. It may also be done as an ongoing process
between designated partners outside class in response to assigned texts for the duration of a
subject unit with notebooks to be turned in to teachers at the end of the unit.

—Prepared by Paul Connolly and associates from the Institute for Writing & Thinking,
Bard College

2012