Templates as a cognitive apprenticeship

Shaping student thought

I know of a number of teachers who have explored the use of templates, inspired by Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say, I Say, to introduce students into the common moves made to construct arguments.

Given my own notion that writing is a cognitive apprenticeship, I think providing templates is an essential first step in helping students learn how to think and, in the long term, helps students become more rather than less creative in their thinking.

Templates as a thinking training tool

Thinking about templates, I was reminded of my own progress as a cook. First, I followed recipes, then I progressed to conceptualizing meals in terms of templates.

For example, when I started cooking stir-fries, I followed recipes from many places. Each time I wanted to make one, I had to search through cookbooks, magazines, and the internet: every stir-fry seemed like a research project.

At some point, however, I realized that all stir-fries follow the same template: protein + vegetables + flavorings (sauce and herbs) + base (rice or noodles)

With that template in mind, I could now think about stir-fries: I had shifted from someone who follows recipes to someone who could cook. Similar templates for other dishes enabled me to develop my ability to think about various dishes.

Likewise, I suspect that writing templates might allow students to shift from students who complete writing assignments to people who write to think, drawing from an essential set of templates.

Templates enable creativity

Once I learned these templates, far from feeling constricted in the kitchen, I actually felt much more creative.

To draw out the cooking analogy, I felt better equipped to experiment with combinations of proteins and vegetables, sauces and herbs. During a healthy period, I shifted the base and replaced rice and noodles with lettuce to create a low-carb stir-fry.

In the writing classroom, likewise, templates could serve as what rhetoricians call an “invention” device: just as I experimented with different combinations of sauces, so student writers might draw upon existing templates to invent new ideas.

Painting by numbers?

The common complaint that I’ve heard about templates is that they achieve the same effect as a painting by numbers approach: they help students produce writing, but they don’t result in much creativity or original thought.

I do think this is a fair critique, but only if templates are seen as ends rather than means. Put simply, I believe that any writing template should be there to help the student start their thinking process, but discarded when the writer needs to proceed.

For example, I give my students some templates for “logical relations,” the phrases that writers use to signal their thinking (such as the “for example” at the start of this sentence). In my classroom, I introduce these templates by having the students add one to the start of every single sentence in a paragraph or two. As they inevitably, and justifiably, start to complain, I explain that this was just practice and that they are free to remove any and all from their paragraph.

Also inevitably, every student retains one or two of these phrases with a begrudging look. As we talk, the students generally acknowledge that such phrases helped clarify their own thinking and made their writing clearer.

In a way, the template also serves as a check point: if a piece lacks “example” phrases, realizing this may help the student look to provide supporting evidence. But this is not because I force them to follow a set number of pieces of evidence per paragraph, instead the template guides the student towards thinking carefully about their own argument.

Ultimately, I think templates can offer students a cognitive tool to shape their own thoughts.