Research for Teachers

One of my earliest “aha” moments as an English teacher came during a Grade 11 English lesson on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The classroom discussion was excellent. Students were highly engaged as we explored gothic features in the novel and how Shelley used them to examine morality, scientific ethics, religion, and societal prejudice. Students could verbally articulate sophisticated ideas and respond thoughtfully to one another’s interpretations.

Naturally, I assumed the analytical writing task that followed would also be strong.

It was not.

I gave students a timed literary analysis and instructed them to spend approximately fifteen minutes annotating the extract and outlining their response before beginning the essay itself.

Many students ignored this almost immediately.

Some spent only a few minutes sketching a superficial outline. Others skipped planning altogether. Several later explained that they felt pressure to “just start writing” before they lost their ideas.

At the time, I interpreted this largely as inexperience with analytical writing. I assumed students simply needed more practice managing their time.

Years later, reading The Writing Revolution 2.0 (Hochman et al., 2024) clarified what I was actually observing in that classroom. The book reinforced the research behind one of the most important lessons I have learned about literacy instruction: planning is not optional support. It is a cognitive necessity.

Hochman et al. (2024) explain that writing places enormous demands on executive functioning. Students are simultaneously managing planning, organization, evidence selection, sentence construction, vocabulary, syntax, analysis, and self-monitoring. These processes rely heavily on executive functions associated with the prefrontal cortex, which continues developing well into adulthood.

In other words, many students are not avoiding planning because they are lazy or disengaged. They are cognitively overloaded.

Starting the essay immediately feels productive because it temporarily reduces anxiety. But bypassing the planning stage actually increases the cognitive burden later because students must then generate ideas, organize arguments, select evidence, and structure analysis all at once while drafting.

That was exactly what I had witnessed in my classroom.

Students produced essays containing intelligent ideas, but the writing itself often lacked coherence. Analysis became repetitive or underdeveloped. Arguments drifted. Evidence was not always purposeful. The quality of students’ verbal thinking during discussion far exceeded what ultimately appeared on the page.

Research on writing instruction strongly supports these observations. Graham and Harris (2000) found that explicit strategy instruction, including structured planning before drafting, significantly improves writing quality because it helps students manage the cognitive demands involved in composition. Similarly, Kellogg (2008) argues that skilled writing depends heavily on executive control and planning processes that novice writers cannot yet coordinate automatically.

Strong thinking alone is not enough.

Students also need explicit systems that help them manage the complexity of written expression.

The next time my students completed an in-class analytical essay, I changed my approach. Instead of simply recommending planning, I explicitly taught the annotation and outlining process. We slowed down considerably. I modeled how to organize arguments, group evidence, and map analytical development before drafting began.

More importantly, I enforced the planning time.

Students were not permitted to immediately begin writing the essay itself.

At first, some students resisted this structure. Several still believed they worked “better under pressure” or that outlining disrupted their flow of ideas. But once the essays were completed, the improvement was significant.

The writing became more coherent. Arguments developed more logically. Students sustained analysis for longer periods without losing direction. Even sentence-level control improved because students were no longer trying to manage every cognitive demand simultaneously while drafting.

That early teaching experience fundamentally reshaped how I think about literacy instruction.

For a long time, I unconsciously viewed planning as a study habit rather than an instructional priority. Now I see planning as part of the writing instruction itself. Explicitly teaching students how to externalize and organize thinking before drafting is not lowering rigor. It is what allows students to engage in more sophisticated analysis.

Reading The Writing Revolution 2.0 did not give me this “aha” moment for the first time. It gave me the research behind it.

References

Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (2000). The role of self-regulation and transcription skills in writing and writing development. Educational Psychologist, 35(1), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP3501_2

Hochman, J. C., Wexler, N., Maloney, K., & Lemov, D. (2024). The Writing Revolution 2.0. Jossey-Bass.

Kellogg, R. T. (2008). Training writing skills: A cognitive developmental perspective. Journal of Writing Research, 1(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2008.01.01.1