Often organizational problems make understanding the writer's meaning impossible. If I can not understand what a tutee is trying to say I ask him or her, "What are you trying to say?" After they attempt to read me the line we just read on their paper I ask them again, "What are you trying to say here? I don't understand." I am not so great at waiting forever in silence for them to respond. After a sufficiently long and awkward silence I usually suggest something and ask if that is what they mean. They will then either respond with a "yes" or a "no" and possibly begin to explain. Asking them what they mean helps them to think about what it is that they are really trying to say. It also gives the writer an opportunity to reword what they've written in more comprehensible way.


Honestly I don't have any special tricks to help with organization. This probably spawns from a lack of experience and general knowledge about tutoring. The post-its sound like they could be an effective tool in helping students organize their thoughts. Post-its seem like they do a lot with a little. First, they can help with organization because the writer has to figure out what they are saying in just a few words in each paragraph, and then they become even more useful because of their mobility. I think by putting down the ideas of what you as a writer may be saying in a paragraph allows you to detach yourself from your writing and allows you to be more open to suggestion. It is way less scary to move a post-it around, than it is to move a whole paragraph.


I spoke with Kelley about different tools she uses to help students with organization. She likes to use collored pencils to represent ideas in different paragraphs. Using that trick, you can organize by color. Once again, attaching the paper to colors may help the writer to dettach themselves from the writing. Then it isn't them moving around their perfect ideas, its them just moving around some different colors.