This article was written to offer practical, high-impact routines that help students write more, think more deeply, and talk more purposefully about what they read. These strategies increase the amount of writing students do, provide accessible scaffolds to support all learners, and spark meaningful classroom discourse—all through writing. When students write about reading in intentional ways, they don’t just become better writers; they become stronger, more thoughtful readers too.
(Lori Zembrowski also contributed to this article.)
Writing to Understand: Reconnecting Students with Reading Through Writing
After countless conversations with educators, I kept running into the same issue again and again: students are feeling disengaged from writing. Too often, writing in classrooms feels like a chore rather than a tool for thinking, reflecting, and discovering. Many students struggle to connect with writing, especially when it's tied to reading; they don't see the purpose, and the joy gets lost, but we believe writing can be joyful. It can be a powerful way for students to process and deepen their understanding of what they read.
When students write about reading—not just summarizing, but analyzing, reflecting, questioning, and connecting—they are given the chance to think more deeply and find their voice. I wanted to help teachers bring that kind of purposeful, joyful writing back into the classroom, making writing a meaningful bridge between reading and comprehension.
From Questions to Conversations: Building a Writing Culture Through Discourse
As educators, we know the power of a well-crafted question. But too often, classroom questioning becomes a one-way street—teachers ask, students answer—leaving little room for student voice, creative thinking, or true inquiry. That’s where the routine “Worth a Thousand Words: Developing Questions about Pictures” from The Writing Revolution by Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler comes in. This routine flips the script and gives students the space and structure to generate their own questions—an essential shift if we want to build authentic thinkers, writers, and learners.
Why This Routine Matters
In many classrooms, students struggle with asking meaningful questions because they rarely get the chance to practice. We often expect students to engage in inquiry-based learning without providing scaffolds to help them get there. Worth a Thousand Words meets this need by giving students time to observe, wonder, and formulate questions based on an image—lowering the barrier of entry for students of all levels while raising the cognitive demand. It nurtures creativity, allows for varied interpretations, and builds the habits of inquiry and academic discourse. Most importantly, it gives students time to think ahead, engage deeply, and use their voices in meaningful ways.
The Routine: How It Works
Worth a Thousand Words is simple, powerful, and easy to implement. Here’s how to bring it to life in your classroom:
- Select a compelling image: Choose a rich, content-connected photo, painting, political cartoon, or historical image that relates to your unit of study.
- Observe and Think: Give students 2–3 quiet minutes to study the image independently. Encourage them to jot down anything they notice—details, emotions, or inferences.
- Develop Questions: Ask students to generate 2–3 questions about the image. Prompt them to use question stems such as:
- What is happening in this image?
- Why might this be important?
- What might have happened just before or after this moment?
- What does this image make me wonder about?
- Share and Discuss: Invite students to share their questions in pairs or small groups, then open a class discussion to highlight strong, thought-provoking questions.
- Extend the Thinking: Use these questions as a springboard for writing (quick writes, journal entries, or research prompts), discussion, or deeper exploration of the content.
Classroom Tips
- Model the process with a think-aloud before asking students to try it independently.
- Use this routine regularly to build questioning stamina and confidence.
- Connect the images to core texts, themes, or inquiry topics to deepen understanding.
The Impact on Students
When students practice developing their own questions, they’re not just engaging with a photo—they’re practicing critical thinking, empathy, and analysis. Over time, this routine strengthens their ability to ask better questions across all subjects, which translates into more thoughtful reading, richer writing, and deeper discussions.
Students become active participants in their learning, not passive recipients of information. For reluctant learners, especially, images provide a non-text-dependent entry point that levels the playing field and sparks curiosity.
Worth a Thousand Words is more than an activity—it’s a mindset shift. By slowing down, giving students time to think, and empowering them to wonder out loud, we cultivate the very skills they need to thrive in academic and real-world settings.
Purposeful Notes: Building a Bridge from Reading to Writing
Too often, we assume students know how to take notes—yet many struggle with it because they’ve never been explicitly taught strategies that match the demands of the text or task. Traditional note-taking often fails because students are unsure what to focus on, how to organize their thinking, or how to use notes meaningfully after reading.
The Note Taking Structures tool offers practical, flexible formats to support comprehension and make student thinking visible. These include concept maps, text structure-based graphic organizers, modified Cornell notes, and visual tools like episodic notes and sketchnotes. Each structure is designed to scaffold reading and writing by giving students a purpose, a way to organize information, and a pathway to deeper analysis and discussion.
When modeled and practiced regularly, these formats improve student outcomes by increasing engagement, supporting synthesis, and strengthening the reading-writing connection.
Retell with Purpose: Summarizing as a Thinking Tool
One of the most deceptively difficult tasks we ask students to do is “write a summary.” It sounds simple, but when we dig into student responses, we quickly realize many don’t fully understand what a summary is—or how to write one. They either retell every detail, copy full sentences from the text, or write something too vague to be useful. That’s because summarizing isn’t intuitive. It’s a skill that requires clear instruction, consistent modeling, and opportunities for guided practice.
What Is a Summary?
A summary is a brief statement that captures the most important ideas from a text. It should answer the questions: What is this mostly about? What’s essential to remember? Our expectation is that students learn to distill complex information, organize it meaningfully, and express it clearly. But that’s a tall order if they don’t know what information to look for or how to structure their thinking. That’s why we need routines that break this complex task into manageable steps—and help students practice making decisions about what matters most.
Two Routines That Work:
#1 - $2.00 Gist List Summary
The $2.00 Gist List Summary routine helps students identify and prioritize key words and phrases before they ever begin writing a summary. It’s especially effective because it guides students toward the economy of language and focused thinking.
How It Works:
- Students read a section of text and underline or highlight words related to the main ideas.
- They then work in pairs or groups to create a “$2.00 Gist List”—a selection of no more than 20 words, each “costing” $0.10, that best capture the gist of the text.
- After refining their list for redundancy or precision, students use the list to draft a focused summary.
Why It Works:
This method gives students structure and freedom: a concrete goal (20 words max) but flexible enough for varied responses. It encourages collaboration, deep reading, and word choice.
#2 - Shrinking Sections
Shrinking Sections is a powerful partner routine that builds metacognition and supports peer-to-peer feedback. Students practice identifying the most important ideas in small chunks of text and summarizing them in 10 words or fewer.
How It Works:
- Students take on rotating roles as “Player” (reader) and “Coach” (listener and feedback-giver).
- After reading a section aloud, the Coach asks guiding questions like “Who or what is this mostly about?” and “What’s the most important thing about it?”
- Both students then write a summary of the section in about 10 words, share, and provide feedback.
Why It Works:
This method scaffolds summary writing in a way that builds oral language, listening, and comprehension. By focusing on one section at a time, it teaches students how to chunk information, identify main ideas, and express them concisely. The coaching structure also ensures every student is actively engaged and learning from both roles.
The Impact on Student Outcomes
When routines like these are implemented consistently, students gain more than just a stronger summary. They develop deeper reading comprehension, enhanced academic vocabulary, and more effective writing. They learn to discern what’s essential, to collaborate thoughtfully, and to build independence in their thinking. Most importantly, they become more confident readers and writers because they have tools that make complex tasks feel doable.
Let’s stop assuming students know how to summarize—and start teaching them explicitly, one routine at a time. These high-leverage strategies not only make summary writing more accessible but also turn it into a meaningful, thinking-centered practice that drives student learning forward.
Writing as a Pathway to Deeper Thinking
When we shift writing from a task students have to do into a tool they get to use for thinking, we open the door to deeper comprehension. Asking and answering questions helps students engage with texts on a personal and analytical level. Purposeful note-taking gives them a way to capture and organize their thinking as they read. And summarizing—when done with intention—requires students to distill meaning, prioritize information, and make sense of what matters most.
These writing moves aren’t just academic skills—they’re habits of mind that help students read more thoughtfully, think more critically, and communicate more clearly. By intentionally weaving them into our instruction, we not only improve reading comprehension but also help students rediscover the joy and power of writing as a meaningful part of their learning.
If you would like more information or support around embedding these practices into your classroom, please contact us today.
Lindsay Johnson is a Literacy Consultant with nearly 20 years of experience in education. She specializes in comprehension intervention, literacy training, literacy intervention, and coaching.
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