Prewriting

Prewriting is the phase where you begin to hone your thoughts into a specific thesis/idea. There are many great prewriting strategies that AI shouldn’t replace, but enhance! 

Ways to use GenAI in prewriting:

• Generate ideas

  • • Provide multiple perspectives on a given subject

    • Provide alternate viewpoints that you may have overlooked

• Inspiration

  • • Ask for an opening sentence for your assignment and then try writing the next sentence yourself

• Discussion

  • • Engage in conversation to help you work through your ideas

• Direction

  • • Help locate key writers and positions on the subject

    • Direct you to texts already written

    • Identify primary players

    • Identify the most important articles written about your subject

• Quickwrites

  • This is a place for teachers, not students, to use Generative AI to scaffold and pivot for stuck students

  • Use generative AI to develop guided questions and sentence starters 

• Zero Draft

  • Low-pressure draft, even before a first draft; more of a revised quickwrite or series of connected quickwrites

  • In this space, AI can function as a brainstorming partner; it can replace using a Google search for additional prompts, and instead can be more precise and help us find exactly what we’re looking for

  • Train students on how to engineer a precise prompt to get support from generative AI in a relevant and detailed way

• Keep in Mind

  • We are the conduit between generative AI (like ChatGPT) and our students. 

  • We need to help them evaluate their responses and help identify any bias or inaccuracies.

  • We also need to help students internalize the feedback they receive from AI and be more reflective about that feedback and consider what suggestions to keep and ignore and why.

  • Ultimately, we need to reinforce that AI makes suggestions, but students make the decisions.

"AI-Proof" Writing Activities

Me-Time Log

• How it Works: Students keep a log of what they do in their free time over the course of two weeks. After the two weeks, they create a summary of their observations of the log and use those observations to generate starting points for future research and writing projects.

• Takeaways: Students can present their logs, which builds community. I think this would be best used for personal narrative writing. Possible modification: inserting log into AI to look for trends.

Random Fact Fantasia

• How it Works: Students will find three interesting, surprising, or thought-provoking facts. They will write down each fact on a separate piece of paper, then in pairs or individually, they will be assigned three of the random facts and generate a list of different possible research projects/questions/topics that could incorporate this fact. They will then share their list and choose a topic to use to begin creating an outline.

• Takeaways: This would work best with research projects/informative writing. Students can use AI to help them find the three interesting facts at the beginning, with the disclaimer to make sure the facts AI finds are credible.