Drafting

What is Drafting?

Drafting is the stage where students take their ideas, notes, and research and begin turning them into a full piece of writing. It’s all about getting thoughts down on the page without worrying too much about perfection. During this phase, students work on organizing their ideas, developing their voice, and building clear paragraphs that support their purpose. It’s a chance to explore what they want to say and how they want to say it. Drafting helps students move from scattered thoughts to structured writing—and reminds them that writing is a process, not a one-and-done task.

Strategies

AI and Writing by Sidney I. Dobrin

Keep in mind that GenAI’s writing process is NOT the same as a person’s--it will not provide multiple drafts.

Ways to use it in Drafting:

To provide ideas for limited sections that you can then use or expand into the larger whole
To ask for details rather than complete texts
Revise your prompts and try multiple times, refining your search input each time
- - To inform your drafting; the responses are not the drafts themselves
To help arrange information is different orders depending on genre (podcast vs essay)
To organize disparate pieces of a draft into a cohesive document
To give ideas for individual sentences and word choices

AI in the Writing Workshop by Dennis Magliozzi and Kristina Peterson

Always begin with mentor texts before even introducing AI in the drafting process.

Five rules:
- Write first
- Struggle second
- Prompt third
- Question fourth
- Reflect fifth

Rethinking Writing Instruction: In the Age of AI by Randy Laist

"AI-Proof" Writing Activities

Collaborative Paragraph

How it Works: Choose one student’s research paper outline and model turning it into a paragraph as a class. Then, split students into small groups (3-4) and assign them other parts of the outline to create into paragraphs. Require that students include a topic sentence and 2-3 supporting details. Finally, come back together as a class to review the paragraphs and ask the student whose outline was used if the paragraphs created by their peers matched/differed their own.
Takeaways: Use a teacher sample outline instead, encourage students to use this strategy for future writing. This strategy builds a writing community.

AI-Informed Drafting

How it Works: Students will use AI to draft their paper. Encourage students to modify their prompt so that it is specific to their outline and have AI write their draft. Then, ask students to reflect on the AI-generated draft by asking questions such as: What does the chatbot paper do well? What is different about the chatbot paper from the one you are envisioning? How can you go beyond what the chatbot has written? Be sure to emphasize that (as of now) AI isn’t able to replicate human writing. After students reflect, give them time to revise their outline and begin drafting their paper based on their reflections.
Takeaways: A good way to compare AI vs. human-generated texts and to show the limitations of AI writing. What is stopping students from just turning in their AI-generated draft?

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