![]() Read what you have written to see if you have discovered anything about your subject or found a line of questioning you’d like to pursue. You can repeat this exercise several times, using the same or a variety of topics connecting to your subject. It’s ok if it’s messy or makes sense only to you. Your goal is to generate as much as you can about the topic in a short period of time and to get used to the feeling of articulating ideas on the page. Do not concern yourself with spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If you get stuck and don’t know what to say next, write “I’m stuck and don’t know what to say next…” or try asking yourself “what else?” until another idea comes to you. Write (on paper or on a computer) for 7-10 minutes non-stop on that topic. It can be a specific detail or a broad concept-whatever you are interested in exploring at the moment. Choose a topic, idea, question you would like to consider. Find a clock, watch, or timer to help you keep track of time. The following activities will help students both generate and clarify initial responses to course material: Many will have trouble moving beyond this vague sense or simple reaction toward ideas that are more processed, complex, or what we often call “deep.” We can foster that move to a deeper understanding by providing opportunities to externalize and fix their ideas on paper so that they may both see their ideas and then begin to see the relationships between them. But, for more students, their thinking will remain an unorganized, vague set of ideas referring to the subject. This thinking is often furthered through class discussion and some students automatically, internally move from these initial sortings of ideas into complex, logical interpretations of material at this point. that leads them to new perspectives, understanding, questions, reactions about the course material. For some students this begins to happen internally or through what we call “thinking,” unvoiced mulling, sorting, comparing, speculating, applying, etc. ![]() In order to write a paper for a class, students need ways to move from the received knowledge of the course material to some separate, more synthesized or analyzed understanding of the course material. While some students may not recognize some of these activities as “writing,” they may see that doing this work will help them do the thinking that leads to easier, stronger papers. Through critical thinking exercises, students move from a vague or felt sense about course material to a place where they can make explicit the choices about how words represent their ideas and how they might best arrange them. ![]() With an understanding of how to discover and arrange ideas, they will have more success in getting their ideas onto the page in clear prose. We can introduce students to a process of generating and sorting ideas by teaching them how to use exercises to build ideas. We can help students most by teaching them how to see and make choices when working with ideas. You’ll find targeted exercises here and ways to adapt them for use in your course or with particular students. At the Writing Center, we work one-on-one with thousands of student writers and find that giving them targeted writing tasks or exercises encourages them to problem-solve, generate, and communicate more fully on the page. If you find yourself wishing your students would write more thoughtful papers or think more deeply about the issues in your course, this handout may help you.
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