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Add your insights about this strategic planning tool

I wanted my first year college students to have a crutch they could use to walk each other through the strategic planning process and get the immediate feedback that I could not personally provide all students.

In addition, I wanted students to practice strategies for planning their essays until using a strategic planning process became an automatic response to a writing prompt.

Automaticity is important: students are not able to think deeply about the content of their writing until they no longer have to think deliberately about every step of the writing process.

In some classes, the collaborative planning materials worked like magic, enabling students get along without my continual feedback during their preparation for writing.

In others, Talk It Out didn't seem to work at all.

Did oral planning work for your students?

You probably had mixed results, learned a few things, and encountered some problems that made you scratch your head or pull your hair.

I would love to hear about your experiences. So would folks wondering whether Talk It Out is worth buying.

Give quick comment on this page now. . . . .

Or write a full review & get publishing credit

If you make the effort to do a full review, you can do a little strategic planning for your career at the same time: ask for a byline so you can list the review on your CV under publication credits. (Hint: a page of 300-400 words looks impressive and is not so long readers close their browsers and run for the refrigerator.)

Care to share your experience with other teachers?

Do you have rant or rave about Talk It Out? Share it! It's helpful if you mention:

• In what grade levels you used Talk It Out.
• How many times students used the Talk It Out materials.
• How you taught students to use Talk It Out strategically.