Written Thoughts

A structure for groups of four around one table, with four steps of which the first and the last happen only once. First the class forms groups and slips and pens go into the middle of the table. Then you show an open question and everyone writes one idea per slip, says it out loud, puts it in the middle and takes the next one straight away, all at the same time, without discussing, for three minutes. Then the group sorts the pile: what belongs together, and what is that group called (three minutes). Every question is a round; after the last question two or three groups tell the class which groups they made, and the rest add to it. In the preparation you can choose "pick the top 3" instead of sorting: the group picks the three strongest ideas and says why.

Because that is the step that makes the structure cooperative. Whoever only writes is brainstorming alone at a shared table: four separate lists in one heap. Whoever says it out loud while putting it down gives the other three a prompt: "solar power" across the table gets you to "heat from the ground". You see the difference after the first minute: the first minute empties what everyone already had, the second and third are the minutes in which the ideas come off the table, and those minutes only exist if things are said out loud. No discussing (that is the other half of the rule), but do listen.

With the default settings the whole structure takes ± 19 minutes: 2 rounds, briefing and look-back included.

One question takes six minutes with the default times: three minutes of writing and putting down, three minutes of sorting. Add a minute and a half for the groups and the materials, and two minutes of whole-class sharing after the last question. Each question more or fewer changes the time by about six minutes, plus the transitions between steps. Whoever prepares the structure sets the time per step and types one question per line, or picks only the number of rounds and asks the questions themselves. If the groups are already sitting together, set the first step to zero; if you collect the yield yourself, set the last one to zero.

One that asks for many answers: "name as many … as you can", "what do you already know about…", "how can you tell that…", "what arguments are there…". The power of the structure is in the pile, and a pile only builds when there is more than one thing to say. A question with one right answer is finished after two slips; a question that is too big ("what do you think of the school?") produces slips that fit nowhere. No time? Under ‘Set up & start’ the AI writes them for you: choose ‘AI writes them’, give your topic and year group, and you read them through before you start. Prefer Microsoft Copilot? Ask: "Write 3 open questions about [topic] for pupils aged [age] that allow many different short answers: the kind of question where a group of four fills twenty slips in three minutes. One question per line, no numbering." Paste the answer into the Questions field; every line becomes a round.

Sorting if you want an overview of everything there is; the top 3 if you want the group to make a choice and defend it. When sorting, the group puts together what belongs together and gives every pile a name, which yields a map of the topic, good for the start of a theme. With the top 3 the group picks the three strongest ideas and agrees why those three, which yields a decision, good when something is going to be done with it: a project choice, a ground rule, an agenda. Three is deliberately few: with five nobody has to choose. You pick it in the preparation; the steps stay the same, and the whole-class step then asks for the reasons rather than for the group names.

Three things carry the structure. One: the rules of the writing: one idea per slip, say it out loud, do not discuss. Model it once in the first round and walk past the tables in the first minute; after that the group keeps to it. Two: the writing time. Do not stop after a minute because it goes quiet: the second and third minutes are the ones the structure exists for. Three: the naming. Do not intervene when a group puts a slip in the "wrong" pile; ask at the whole-class step why it is there, and ask for the names of the groups, not for the individual slips. The player does the rest: the timer, the question on screen and the step.

Count on ten slips per student per question; a group of four easily reaches twenty to thirty in three minutes. Small loose sheets, sticky notes, or an A4 cut into eight: anything that carries one idea and can be pushed across a table. A pen each, preferably the same colour, so that no handwriting stands out and an idea is not attached to a name. When sorting into groups, a few extra blank slips for the group names. The materials are listed in the preparation too, so you do not have to look for them during the lesson.

In a whole-class brainstorm one person speaks at a time and the others think along or wait, and the ideas belong to the quickest speakers. In brainwriting everyone writes silently for themselves and the lists only come together at the end, so nobody builds on anybody. Written Thoughts sits in between and takes the best of both: everyone writes at the same time, as in brainwriting, and says it out loud, so that someone else's idea becomes the prompt for yours, as in a good conversation. Plus a step neither of them has: the group sorts the pile immediately and gives every group a name.

Snowball funnels: first everyone thinks alone, then two compare, then four, then the whole group, and every step selects what the best ideas are. That costs twenty to thirty-five minutes and ends with an ordered map of the whole class. Written Thoughts stays at one table and is finished in six minutes per question; it yields a pile per group, sorted and named. Rule of thumb: Written Thoughts to collect a lot quickly, snowball when the class has to arrive at one shared result.

In think, write & share everyone first writes their own list in silence, and then the group compares and completes the lists: the conversation comes after the writing. In Written Thoughts things are said out loud during the writing, everything lies in the middle instead of on each person's own sheet, and it ends with sorting rather than comparing. Think, write & share fits a question everyone has to think about alone first; Written Thoughts fits a question where you want the ideas to spark each other.

Yes, with a digital board instead of slips: groups in breakout rooms, either a board each or one shared board per group, and the rule stands: one idea per card, say it out loud in the room, straight on to the next. Sorting is even easier online: drag the cards and give a column a name. The player shared in the main room, or through the live link, gives the step, the timer and the question.

The structure is Spencer Kagan's Jot Thoughts: a cooperative structure in which a team writes ideas on separate cards at the same time in response to an open question, names them out loud and puts them in the middle: simultaneous participation and individual accountability in one movement. The sorting afterwards comes from the same family of sorting structures. Unlike brainwriting (Bernd Rohrbach, 1969), in which writing is silent, saying it out loud is the point here. What makes the structure work in a classroom (one idea per slip, saying and not discussing, a name per pile) is recorded here as the player runs it.