Planning your content

Planning the content

Planning a piece of academic writing is quite an individual process, but the following are some hints and tips that may help you. If you haven't read it already, have a look at the 'Approaching your assignment' page to see how best to 'translate your question'.

I always think that planning the content happens in two stages: the first very scrappy planning when you really don't know a lot about the topic and the more detailed and informed plan that takes place after you have done some research of how you are going to lay out your discussion in your assignment.

'Scrappy planning'

This stage is really for gathering thoughts and ideas about what you know about the topic and also to note the gaps in your information.

  • A spider diagram is a useful way to brainstorm what you know and to write out some questions you want answered. The gaps in information will help you to identify what areas you need to research further.

  • The words you write here might also be useful starting keywords for searching the library catalogue.

  • The five question words: who, what, where, when and why are useful starting points as they are helpful to encourage deeper thinking about the topic.

Detailed plan

Stage 1:

  • As you read and take notes try adding short notes or just single words to your original brainstorm.

  • If you run out of space you could make a new sheet with just one element of the original on it to fill in.

  • You may use pen and paper like me or you may use an online resource such as Coggle to lay out your plan.

  • Take time to make links as you go between your sections and to note where theories or writers converge or diverge. This will make it easier to build in critical discussion in your paragraphs.

  • Try using lines and arrows and different colours to make links between sections. Strategies like these are useful when writing notes but also useful during the planning stage to make it clear to yourself what links with what.

Stage 2:

  • Next it is time to start to plan what will go in your paragraphs.

  • Use elements from your brainstorm as paragraph headings and then add bullet points with the content summary you plan to add.

  • This helps to lay out in order of your 'story' or the information you want to share with a reader.

  • Planning this carefully means that you are more likely to have a logical order to your writing and more likely to present an engaging piece of writing to your reader.

Stage 3:

  • Begin writing.

To see what this looks like in practice see my planning below:

This was my first brainstorm for an essay titled: 'Analyse the effectiveness of scaffolding in Maths teaching and KS1.'

You can see I have used the 'question words' to guide my original brain dump and to encourage me to think about the different elements of potential answers as well as what I already know.

As you can see by all the question marks my original knowledge was pretty sketchy so I used these gaps as my guide when searching the library catalogue for resources.

This is my updated version, where I added some extra information and ideas for further searching. I crossed out some elements that I didn't think I would include in the finished essay and drew arrows from section to section. This helps me to see where the links are and helps me plan how my paragraph breakdown will look in the final essay.

  • Once I'm ready to plan the layout of the essay, I like to rewrite the notes in a more linear order so that I can see the progression my discussion will take. See my short notes to the right with some extra detail under paragraph two with the kind of detail that would help me write a well rounded paragraph:


'Analyse the effectiveness of scaffolding in Maths teaching at KS1'

Introduction

Main body:

  1. Background: definition and main theorists, short history of the term

  2. Adult led scaffolding strategies used in Maths

    • teacher and TA main adults

    • Observation and anticipation of difficulties (Read et al. notes) and link back to theorist

    • Modelling - use example of Child C and number bonds and link back to Vygotsky in theory para.

    • procedural prompts (Rosenshine, p.145) - again link to ZPD

    • Combination of these: observation of how procedural prompts developed from T.A.'s anticipation of Child A's difficulties with number bonds and how it worked. Expand on this with case study in red folder on inner city schools.

    • link sentence from here onto peer support as Child B then came along and started to help Child A.

  3. Peer scaffolding strategies used in Maths

  4. Discussion: How effective are these for KS1 pupils? (Link to case study notes in blue folder for practice based examples)

Conclusion