Episode 131: Plan EVERY Extended Response

TRANSCRIPT:

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 131. 

3 reasons why your teen should plan EVERY extended response - whether it’s a 10 mark exam question, 2000 word essay or research inquiry or report style assignment because what I’m seeing right now are way too many students going head first into essays, reports, speeches and extended responses without properly planning. Ending up with lower quality responses and encountering problems that would’ve been so much easier and faster to solve at the planning stage. So, here they are.

Hey Very Important Parents and carers! I hope you and your teens are doing great. 

I am doing great because I’ve been running a lot of coaching sessions lately which is one of my favourite things to do - working personally with students, on their own real life tasks. And, today I want to talk about and share with you what’s been a bit of a common theme in a lot of coaching sessions lately - 
I have been asking one particular question A LOT.
 

Just yesterday, when I was reviewing a Y12 students’ essay response, as I got into the first body paragraph, I asked her:

“Did you plan this response?”
She said - knowingly - “no, I didn’t” 
 

And my reply to that was: 
“I know. I can tell.”
 

With a smile.

Now, it wasn’t a terrible response or anything, but it is so obvious when a student has decided to just get stuck in and start writing. 

In this case, the issue was a bit of repetition - saying the same thing in different ways - trying to make the same point over again. 
 

The other things I also see are a lack of structure, in terms of the order of or the linking of points or a lack of focus, it gets a bit ramble-y or a bit waffle-y or loses its way. But, rather than focusing on the negatives, I want to take this time to explain all the positives - all the benefits of writing a clear and detailed plan for ANY, yes ANY extended response.

There’s no rocket science to working out what those are. They are the opposite of those issues - AND a bit more on top.

Instead of repetition, or lack of structure, or lack of focus when an extended response or essay is intentionally and strategically planned, in detail, the outcome will be:

Clear - as in there is no repetition or going around the houses. The evidence selected is best suited and well-chosen.

It is focused - as in - it directly and effectively answers the question - and does so throughout the response.

It is well structured  - the points flow and BUILD. There are logical links between the points and the order of these actually contributes to the overall response.

In other words, the quality is higher. And the other big positive… it’s also faster and easier to write.

Now, both of these - better quality, faster and easier to write - both of these are REALLY  important to know, because your teen will likely have any of these three reasons why they don’t want to or think they don’t need to make a plan.

And I get it. 

These are all the reasons I hear from students as to why they didn’t make a plan:

The first reason is that they don’t need to. They know what they’re doing so they can just get stuck in. 
 

Now, that might be the case that they know exactly what they’re doing, but let’s just check that shall we, BEFORE we start writing. If they CAN make a clear and solid plan with no trouble at all, that’s great. It should take them about 3 minutes. And having that plan makes it way more likely that their finished response will be more succinct, clear and well-structured than if they did just dive into writing without it. And if they DO find that there is something, even the smallest thing that they aren’t sure of when making that plan - maybe which quote they’ll use, for that point, or how they’ll link everything together in the conclusion so they’re not just repeating back their intro, then this is the ABSOLUTE best time to know.

Which brings us to reason number 2 - that they aren’t clear or confident to actually write the plan. 

They optimistically think: ‘It’ll come to me while I’m writing.” 
Well, the bad news is that that hardly ever happens. 
 

If it does, then it might mean that a different order of points or a different piece of evidence might’ve been better somewhere along the way.  Just being honest here: it’s highly unlikely that the missing piece is just going to come to us at just the right time and it’s the absolute perfect fit in amongst everything else that’s there.

And the third reason students don’t plan is because they feel like they don’t have time.

And this is the BIG one. 
 

Big because it’s probably the most common. And BIG because it’s the biggest mistake AND biggest hurdle to get over.
 

If your teen is short on time - either because they’ve left a homework task to the last minute, or they’re in timed exam conditions - or even - they just want to get it over and done with as quickly as possible for whatever reason  - if they want the task to be as efficient and fast as possible, without sacrificing quality - THAT is the EXACT reason TO make a plan. 
 

I always say - the moment you have the sentence ‘I don’t have time to write a plan’ go through your head - that is your warning bell - alarms and fireworks should explode here -because that this is the exact time you must make a plan.

It’s like saying, I’m late for school. I don’t have time to grab the keys for the car or to walk to the bus stop - I’ll just get started immediately and run and walk my way there. If we took those few minutes to get in the car or catch the bus, the actual journey will be a lot faster and more efficient.

The time it takes to write the plan - you’ll save at least twice that on writing it.
So, if they spend, say 5 minutes in an exam - they’ll save at least 10 mins on the writing in the exam. 
 

If they are doing an extended task in class or for homework, if they spend even 30 mins properly planning, they’ll get back at least an hour in writing time.

Think about the sentences of waffle, repetition, saying the same thing in a different way, that would be saved. Think of the time trying to find a different quote, wishing they’d not already used the first quote, because it would actually be better in this third body paragraph, but hey… plough on.

If time is an issue, then proper planning will save them so much time. THey’ll get the whole thing written much more quickly IF they have a clear and detailed plan AND have a higher quality piece at the end.

Now, the times when planning does feel like a waste of time is when the plan is not detailed. It’s not actually helpful. Then I agree, planning is pointless and a waste of time. 

It can’t just be a basic intro sentence and then the three items for each body paragraph. It needs to include what the actual response or thesis statement or contention or hypothesis is. And then for the body paragraphs, your teen needs to have the explicit point or topic of each paragraph, AND they also need to know exactly which evidence or quotes they’re going to use to support those points, and what order they’re going to go in and how they link to the focus of the question.

They’ll also consider what is the most effective order for those points and paragraphs and evidence.  And even, how they can link together to say something more in the conclusion than just repeating the intro. Notice - not something NEW - they don’t want to bring in anything new in the conclusion. But something more - like the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. That is a whole other podcast episode. I’ve literally delivered a whole tutorial on what to do (and not do) in conclusions, so I won’t get into that now.

All I really, really, REALLY want to get across here is the importance of planning.

The benefits when students go against their inclination to skip it and the pitfalls when they don’t.

So if your teen wants a higher quality essay or extended response and wants it to be easier and faster to write, then a detailed plan will definitely help with that. And who doesn’t want easier and faster AND a better result?

I think that is the actual definition of strategic, effective study.
 

So on that note, I hope you have a brilliant rest of your week. I’ll see you back here next week for another episode - and very likely another real life example to share with you too.