Examples of Informal, Exploratory Writing Activities

Adapted from Chapter 6 of John C. Bean’s Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996)

Informal, exploratory writing is “thinking-on-paper writing we do to discover, develop, and clarify our own ideas” (Bean 97). Or as physicist James Van Allen calls this writing, these activities are “memoranda to myself.”

Instructors don’t have to grade some exploratory writing. Instead, teachers use many of the activities to create discussion, or they can use them as pre-writing opportunities for formal papers. Exploratory writing, as Bean states, “deepens most students’ engagement with course material while enhancing learning and critical thinking” (118)

In-Class Writing (usually not graded and can be integrated into a participation grade)

• Writing at the Beginning of Class to Explore a Subject
• Writing During Class to Refocus a Lagging Discussion or Cool off a Heated One
• Writing During Class to Ask Questions or Express Confusion
• Writing at the End of Class to Sum Up a Lecture or Discussion

Journals (typically graded in some manner)

• Open-Ended Journals—Students write in response to a reading, but the focus of the journal is up to them.
• Semi-Structured Journals—The instructor provides a number of options, but the student has to choose one.
• Guided Journals—The instructor provides one specific prompt, issue, concept, or problem to which students respond.
• Double-Entry Notebooks—Students reflect on course material and then reflect on their reflections.
• “What I Observed/What I Thought” Laboratory Notebooks—These are divided notebooks that present empirical observations (on the left column) and the student’s mental processes (on the right column).
• Contemporary Issues Journals—These journals connect the discipline to current events.
• Exam Preparation Journals—The instructor, early on, provides a list of essay questions that are similar to what students should expect on an exam. The student uses the journal entry to work through major concepts and themes of the course.
• Lecture/Class Summary Journals
• Imagined Interviews with Authors

Other Assignments

• Writing Dialogues—Students write an imaginary situation where two figures of your discipline meet and discuss ideas (examples: Skinner and Freud, Pollack and Van Gogh, Aquinas and Marx)
• Thought Letters—This is an exploratory writing assignment where the student picks his or her concept/problem/idea to explore and takes the writing through numerous drafts after peer and instructor feedback.
• Exploration Task to Guide “Invention” for a Formal Writing—Instructors use part of class time to get students writing in response to their formal writing assignment. Students use brainstorming techniques like freewriting (continuous writing that just gets ideas out), informal outlines, mapping ideas, and other invention strategies.
• Thesis Statement Writing—Students write one sentence (a thesis statement) that focuses their thinking about a subject, aids discussion, or prepares them for a formal writing assignment.

Tim N. Taylor, 2008