Quickwrites 

A quick, effective way for students to recall and understand what they know is to have them engage in a brief writing exercise called a Quickwrite. This strategy helps students access prior knowledge and discover what they already know.  

When a student writes, he/she is thinking critically. One way to engage students in writing is the quickwrite, a one- to five-minute response to a prompt that helps students access their prior knowledge on a topic or record ideas on a stated topic. Quickwrites are focused and yet not threatening, because they are short, and students are usually responding to a prompt that stimulates their thinking.

Quickwrite responses can be categorized into four types: 

1. application of a concept, 
2. imaginative ideas, 
3. offering an opinion, and 
4. justifying a point of view 

The key to successful quickwrites is interesting the students in the prompt so that they provide thoughtful responses.

You might ask students to:

• Summarize an experiment they design or a piece of literature/reading.
• Justify a point of view.
• Draw conclusions from a demonstration, lab, or event.
• Write about their background knowledge or learning process for new material.
• Respond to an open-ended question. 
• Describe or explain a process.