TRANSCRIPT:

You're listening to the Parents of Hardworking Teens podcast, episode 150. Today we're going to be talking about why it is so important, why I spend so much time hammering students about making a plan before they start writing any kind of extended response, report analysis, essay, assignment, and particularly the reasons why they don't. What happens when they don't, and what happens when they do. So let's dive in.

Hey VIPs, how are you going? I hope you and your teens are doing really, really well. Can you believe that this is episode 150? I can't—or well, I can—but if I'd have tried to imagine episode 150 when I started this out, I know I would have found that very, very difficult. But here we are!

And I'm really energised to share what I have to share with you today, which is another kind of episode off the back of a coaching session that I have just had with a student. I've had feedback that these sorts of episodes where it's just talking very, very real-life, very immediate, very tangible experiences and the concepts and the skills that go with them are really helpful and kind of engaging for you, so I will continue to drop these in every now and then.

I have just come off of a coaching session with a student, and it was funny. We were working on and coaching on a report of which their draft is due in a couple of days. So they've almost kind of finished their draft, and they wanted some feedback on what they had so far. They felt kind of confident in finishing off the parts that they still needed to do.

But as we were discussing things, they had this moment where they just went, "Hey, you know, look, I've got to tell you—I didn't really plan this part, or actually, any of the parts." And I did just sort of smile and laugh a little bit, just like I'm doing right now, and I always say like whenever I'm laughing, I'm laughing with you, not at you. But I just sort of replied with, "I can tell. You didn't need to tell me; I can tell."

I say that every time. It is always so, so obvious as a marker when a response has been planned out carefully, strategically, skillfully in advance and when it hasn't. Because this response was—look, it wasn't like all over the place, it wasn't full of waffle, it wasn't repeating—there were definitely some parts that could have been more succinct, but it didn't flow, and I could just kind of tell that the student didn't really know where it was going.

They were analyzing one of their data sets, and they were sort of talking about some elements and some content and some of the data in there, but it didn't have any structure. And when I asked them, "Okay, how does this relate back to the specific topic, the focus of that report, like the key inquiry question?" (they didn't call it that, but that's essentially what it was, you know, the hypothesis), they did say to me, "I don't really know." And I was like, "Okay, this is what we need to figure out."

As soon as you've told me that, I know that there is no plan, because we wouldn't be making a plan that didn't essentially answer the question.

So what I want to share with you is, number one, why making a plan—even for just a one-paragraph response, a relatively simple extended response—is so, so important. Why students don't make a plan—and I actually have two reasons that go in with this. There's one that's very familiar and very common, and then there was the reason that this student gave me as to why they didn't make a plan, and I think it's actually really, really valid and probably happens more than we realize.

Let's start off with the reasons why students don't make a plan and why they don't really want to make a plan. The first one is: "I don't have time." Maybe they're under time pressure in an exam. Maybe they just don't want to spend more time on it than they need to because they just want to get it over and done with—that's maybe "I don't have the time" versus "I don't really want to spend the time; I just want to get this thing out the way."

Or maybe they're just really, really busy and they've got loads of different tasks and they are just trying to smash through it, and that still feels like they don't really have the time even though it's not necessarily a timed piece as such. Either way, it's this whole idea of time and feeling like making a plan takes up a ton of time that they don't really want to spend or they don't feel is going to be the best use of their time. They feel like the best use of their time is just to start writing the thing.

The problem with this is that if they are under time pressure—and that includes just not wanting to spend more time on this task because they're not enjoying it, don't like it, whatever it is—it will take them longer to write that response when they don't have a plan. I promise you. I promise them.

When your brain has that thought fly through it that says, "You don't have time to make a plan. I don't have time for this," or "It'll be faster if I just get started," as soon as those sentences, that whole idea, rushes through their brain, that is the alarm bell that needs to raise the "I have to make a plan" strategy.

As soon as they think they don't have time to make a plan, that's the exact time they need to make a plan. Because when you don't plan that response, it will take longer to write it for two reasons:

1. You're having to think on the go, which means you're having to pause, you're having to reconsider, you're having to think about what you're writing as opposed to having it all noted down and you know exactly what each sentence is going to be.

2. You are more likely to repeat yourself, be less succinct, maybe add in a little bit of waffle or repetition, and that is also going to add to the time it takes to write that response.

I generally tell students: however much time it takes to make the plan, you will save double that when you're writing the response. So if you spend two minutes making a quick dot-point plan, you'll save four minutes in the writing. If you spend ten minutes on a full essay response, you will save easily twenty minutes in the actual write-up because everything will be smoother, clearer, easier, and much, much faster.

The next reason is the one that this student raised for me today, and I think it happens a lot; it's just not quite as clear because we don't have something definitive like time to measure against. For this student, what their answer ended up being was: "I didn't really know what I was doing."

So they couldn't plan—and this is almost like the Catch-22—"I didn't really know what I was doing, so I couldn't make a plan." And I did joke with them and just say, "So you thought you'd just start writing anyway? I don't know what I'm doing, and the best solution for this is just to start writing."

We decided that the solution for not really knowing what I'm doing is probably not just start writing. The first step is figure out what I need to be doing, whether that means having a conversation with their teacher, whether it means going back through the task sheet, whether it means getting some peer support, whatever it might be. That 100% needs to be their first step.

Because what was happening for this student was they had then written this full draft, they'd already told me, "Hey, I'm over the word count." That happens a lot, especially when we don't really know what we're doing because we end up writing more than we need to; we're not being succinct, we're not being focused, we're not being direct, and we're not really being sophisticated in our response. So number one, they've gone over the word count, so they've already done more work than they needed to, and number two, we had to do a lot of editing and let's say refining of that response.

There were definitely things in there that were absolutely valid and we could absolutely use, things that were not necessary or were repetitive and we needed to get rid of, and things that we needed to structure and things that we actually needed to include that weren't already there. The only way we could figure that stuff out was by writing out the plan of what that response needed to do.

And I say "do," not what they needed to write about, but what they needed to do. That's why I talk so much about command words and levels of response—what is it we need to do and prove, not what are we just writing about. So we put together a plan, we put together a structure.

If you're wondering how you can help your teen do this at home, this is where they need to be considering maybe a paragraph structure—so are they using TEEL, are they using PETAL? If they had that paragraph structure, what would that look like for the content that they need to be including? Again, if they can't figure out what each of those sentences would be for that paragraph, then we've got kind of a bigger problem to solve there first. There is no point in starting writing. There's a very small percentage chance that they are going to fluke writing the exact right content at the right level in the right way if they don't really know what that needs to be.

So they can create a plan according to a paragraphing structure, and within that paragraph, I would be encouraging them to use the three steps of analysis. They will 99% be needing to do some form of analysis; we need to move them up from just explaining and make sure that they actually hit those higher-level criteria, the higher-level descriptors.

And then the second part of that is they need to know exactly what's going into that paragraph or paragraphs. It is not enough just to say, "Hey, I'm going to write a paragraph about this particular thing," or "I'm going to include this particular thing." They need to know exactly:

• What is the point that they are making?

• What evidence or examples are they going to use?

• What relationships or patterns or connections are they going to discuss?

That all needs to go into their plan. It is not enough just to say "I'm going to make my key point and then I'm going to give some evidence"—they need to know what that is before they start writing.

Another great reason to do the plan before you start writing is if you've got multiple paragraphs, let's say you've got an essay, you may well find that the evidence that you used let's say in paragraph one—if you just started getting writing and you didn't make a plan—might well have been a better piece of evidence to use in paragraph three let's say. But you've already now used it.

But if you do this in the plan and you realize, "Oh, that would be a really great quote for paragraph three. I'm going to move it down there," and then they can think, "What can I replace that with that would work in paragraph one?" and it is so much more strategic.

Yes, it does take some time, and it does take effort. It feels like it uses more effort, but I cannot tell you how much effort and how much time it will save them when it comes to writing the thing.

Making a plan immediately shines a spotlight on any let's say deficiencies—anything they're not sure on, anything they don't know how to do. Maybe they don't know exactly what they need to be putting in; maybe they don't know how to deliver it at the levels that's going to mean they hit the criteria and the marks that they're going for.

Awareness is the first step to solving any problem, right? And I know that if they are in an exam, it's kind of too late; they can't go and ask for help, which is why I really want so many students to build these skills and build these strategies before they are sat in their final exams. We want to get all of this stuff on board in advance so they have these skills and tools ready to go.

But the other benefits are:

1. It will save them time and effort because it'll make everything easier and faster to write.

2. It will produce a higher quality response. They're going to have thought through what content they're including, what connections they are making, and the best order for those different points and connections to be made.

3. They'll have decided what is the best evidence to include, making all of those decisions strategically and intentionally in advance before they start writing.

4. They're going to have a much more succinct and focused delivery of those things. There's much less chance that they're going to start waffling or repeating themselves, and there is much more chance of producing a sophisticated, discerning, detailed response—all of those lovely words that they like to use on the marking criteria—when they have taken the time to plan.
    

So although I know it can be very hard to override that temptation to just dive in or just start for whatever reason that temptation might be occurring, my mission is to convince as many students as possible to make a plan before they write any kind of extended response and, importantly, ensure that they have the skills, the strategies, and techniques to be able to make that plan really, really effectively.