You’ve just read the title of this post and are laughing uncontrollably. I get it. Writing is hard. My students confirm this, and so do yours.

Many moms report that their students have ideas in their heads but can’t get them on paper. Let’s start fixing that today.

What creates this strange head-to-hand disconnect? One major reason is that students don’t organize their thoughts or plan their papers. Big mistake. They think it’s a time waster; but you know otherwise.

The following is a short activity on opinion writing, devised for success. Practice these four steps to writing with your students. They won’t actually be writing this essay, which is one of the reasons this activity works so well.

1. Choose a topic that interests them

It can be something goofy (“Why children should never do chores”), on their radar (“Why I should be allowed to get a job”), or be related to something they are involved in (“The benefits of playing soccer”).

2. Let them spitball anything on the topic

This is called brainstorming, one of the important steps to writing, and should not be edited, hampered, or thwarted in any way. Here, there are no “dumb ideas.” Throw perfection out the window. Include siblings or friends in the brainstorming session, if you wish, and watch the number of ideas multiply and become more creative. To get the flow of ideas moving, try asking this question: “What do you want people to know about this?”

Don’t organize the ideas. No bubbles, webs, lists, or outlines. No writing down and then scratching out. This is not the time to evaluate the ideas. Let them flow—whether silly or serious. Practical, essay-worthy ideas often come from silly ones. Strange but awesome tip: use a whiteboard, a large piece of paper, or a lined sheet of paper turned sideways. Brainstorming seems less like work this way.

3. Let them choose three ideas

Let them choose three ideas they could write about and that seem to fit together. Because they are not going to write this essay, they’ll have an easier time of choosing three points. The pressure is off. Then ask them if some left-over points could be used to support any of their three points. Likely, some will.

4. Ask them to arrange their three main points

Ask them to arrange their three main points into an order that makes sense. They don’t have to know anything about point orders and neither do you. It’s been my experience that students have an innate sense of how to organize their points—if only they would think about them for a little while. Ask them to explain why they chose that order for their points.

Have fun with this activity. If you walk through these steps to writing once or twice a week, your students will find that planning and organizing an essay will stop being the heart-clenching, Kleenex-inducing chore it is today. Moving information from the head to the hand will succumb to gravity and become almost effortless.

Yours for a more vibrant writing class,