Inspiring writing: Bridging the gap between art and literacy in the classroom

Writing is a cognitively draining activity filled with complex steps and procedures (Hayes and Flower, 1980). Students have to navigate the planning, text production, and revision components of writing (Flower and Hayes, 1981). Research has focused on using many different tasks (Vanderburg, 1996) and processes (Vanderburg and Swanson, 2007) which reduce the cognitive drain of the writing process. The goal of this paper is to present two different activities which teachers can use to reduce the cognitive drain during the writing process. One activity uses drawing as a mediation tool assisting in visualising text and implementing supportive quotes in student writing. The second activity uses drawing to reduce the cognitive drain while instructing how to write an expository text with a thesis and supporting evidence.