Technolandy

SOL Summer of Learning 2026 – Thinking about Writing Different(iated)

What happens inside your brain when I say…

Write a story about an apple.

One person immediately sees an apple.

Someone sees an entire scene.

Someone hears the first sentence.

Someone starts talking internally.

Someone needs to talk to somebody nearby right away.

Someone thinks of five possible stories and can’t decide.

Someone smells or tastes something so strongly that it becomes distracting — or even unpleasant.

Someone remembers an apple orchard.

Someone sees nothing at all and starts assembling the story conceptually.

Someone sees a storyboard but can’t find the words to go with it.

Someone needs to start writing before they know what they’re thinking.

Someone’s hand starts to hurt just thinking about what comes next.

Someone freezes.

Someone starts organizing.

Someone has already forgotten about the apple.

Someone looks for a pencil.

Another reaches for a keyboard.

Another wants a microphone.

Someone knows the complete story but can’t figure out the first sentence.

And someone’s (mine) brain immediately asks:

How long does it have to be?

😂

Thirty brains.

Thirty very different neurological journeys.

And somehow, at the end, we collect thirty artifacts, call the thing we’re measuring writing, and start comparing them to each other.

We may have confused writing with its output.

A handwritten paragraph is an artifact of writing.

It isn’t writing itself.

Writing is an absurdly complex bundle of processes that school often treats as one ability.

When we say “this student struggles with writing,” we may be collapsing idea generation, language formulation, retrieval, sequencing, working memory, executive function, transcription, spelling, spatial organization, audience awareness, revision and self-monitoring into one judgment.

And different brains can experience every part of that process differently.

Some brains experience language differently.

A few neurological differences I encourage further exploration of:

Grapheme–colour synesthesia — letters (and sometimes punctuation) automatically evoke particular colours. You may have touched this under reading, but writing introduces a different question: when I choose/type/write a letter or word, am I also producing an internal colour pattern? A misspelling can apparently even “look wrong” because the colour sequence is wrong – or look write because the colour pattern is rite even if the letters ain’t in the dictionary order…

Lexical–gustatory synesthesia — particular words evoke tastes or flavours. This one is wonderfully weird for writing: imagine word choice carrying an involuntary sensory consequence. Two synonyms may convey roughly the same meaning but feel radically different to the writer.

Auditory/linguistic → colour or shape — heard or internally generated sounds/words can evoke colours, textures or forms. That gets particularly interesting for writers who “hear” sentences internally while composing. And may get a good or bad sensation from it that may lead to a unexpected edit…

Ordinal linguistic personification (OLP) — letters, numbers, days, months, etc. acquire personalities, genders or characteristics. So an individual isn’t necessarily manipulating emotionally neutral symbols when writing.

Spatial-sequence synesthesia — sequences such as alphabets, numbers, months or days occupy stable spatial arrangements. Less directly “writing,” but potentially relevant to how someone mentally organizes sequences, narratives or even lists, the we tend to declare as ‘introductory’ writing (and then and then and then)

Dysgraphia / motor-based differences. The thought may be completely formed while handwriting itself consumes enormous cognitive bandwidth. This opens your obvious “Why are we assessing the hand when we meant to assess the brain?” conversation. Ableists insist you can just work harder… my lived experience – it’s easier to just be brief as harder was just more frustrating – especially when an error on the last line of the good copy of a page of writing led to a complete redo…

Working-memory differences. Some brains can’t comfortably hold the idea + sentence structure + spelling + punctuation + where I’m going next simultaneously. The fascinating writer is the one who can tell you a brilliant answer and then writes three mediocre sentences.

Retrieval differences. “I know the word. I can recognize the word. I cannot retrieve the word right now.” This gets especially interesting when speaking, typing and handwriting produce different levels of fluency.

Sequencing / executive-function differences. Some people generate ideas associatively rather than linearly. School writing tends to demand beginning → middle → end, thesis → evidence → conclusion. But a brain may actually compose mosaic → connections → rearrange → discover the argument. Sound familiar? 😉

Language-formulation differences. Knowing something isn’t identical to converting that knowledge into syntactically organized language. This connects to developmental language disorder, autism, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental differences without reducing writing difficulty to any one diagnosis.

Spatial/visual differences. Margins, line spacing, letter placement, paragraph organization and even navigating a page can require substantial visual-spatial processing. And digital writing changes that cognitive demand dramatically.

Orthographic differences. Spelling isn’t merely “remembering how words are spelled.” Different brains rely differently on phonological, morphological and visual/orthographic information. Spellcheck therefore becomes a really interesting accessibility conversation rather than simply cheating. And also why spellcheck is sometimes over-relied on… not that it’s easier, it’s just uncertain by the brain to recognize a difference.

Processing-speed differences. Perhaps one of education’s least examined biases: we frequently equate writing quickly with writing well. A learner who needs 60 minutes to formulate what another produces in 20 isn’t necessarily doing inferior thinking… and for me in primary – first done was best! Even remember a teacher comment that I would start writing my answer before the prompt was even finished being chalked up on the board..

Inhibition/filtering differences. Some brains struggle to generate enough; others generate everything. The challenge isn’t “having ideas” but deciding which ideas not to write. ADHD becomes particularly interesting here. My son’s autism brain led to similar frustrations – lots of ideas, but sorting out which ‘one’ would be the best answer… for the audience of the teacher… was simply not doable.

Interoception/emotion and writing. Writing isn’t neurologically neutral. Being told “write about yourself,” “be creative,” or even facing a blank page can introduce anxiety, perfectionism and threat responses that alter what someone can produce.

Speech-to-text versus fingers-to-text versus pen-to-paper. THIS could be a key conversations – especially when thinking about AI collaboration. If the same brain produces substantially different writing depending upon the input modality, what exactly is its “writing ability”?

Some brains know what they want to say — but getting it onto the page is the problem.

This is where dysgraphia and other motor differences become interesting.

The thought may be completely formed while handwriting consumes enormous cognitive bandwidth.

Which raises an obvious question:

Why are we assessing the hand when we meant to assess the brain?

My lived experience with handwriting wasn’t that I needed to work harder.

Working harder mostly meant becoming more frustrated.

It was easier to be brief.

And there was nothing quite like reaching the final line of a carefully handwritten “good copy,” making an error, and discovering that the solution was apparently to rewrite the entire page.

Good times.

Some brains can’t comfortably hold everything at once.

Consider what we’re asking a developing writer to manage simultaneously:

the idea + sentence structure + word retrieval + spelling + punctuation + handwriting + what I just wrote + where I’m going next.

Working memory matters.

That’s why I find the learner who can tell you a brilliant answer and then writes three mediocre sentences so interesting.

Which artifact represents their understanding?

Some brains don’t think in straight lines.

School writing tends to love:

beginning → middle → end

or

thesis → evidence → conclusion

or, of course, the beloved hamburger paragraph.

But some people generate ideas associatively.

Their actual composition process might look more like:

mosaic → connections → rearrange → discover what I’m trying to say.

Sound familiar? 😉

For some brains, the challenge isn’t generating ideas at all.

It’s stopping them.

Which idea matters?

Which connection should disappear?

Which of my seventeen potentially fascinating tangents is the one the teacher actually wants?

I’ve watched that frustration with my son. Lots of ideas weren’t necessarily helpful when the task required figuring out which one was the “best” answer — particularly the best answer for the audience of the teacher.

And some brains simply need more time.

Perhaps one of education’s least examined biases is how easily we confuse writing quickly with writing well.

A learner who needs 60 minutes to formulate what someone else produces in 20 isn’t necessarily doing inferior thinking.

I remember the opposite expectation from primary school:

First done was best!

I even remember a teacher commenting that I would start writing my answer before the entire prompt had been chalked onto the board.

Fast?

Absolutely.

Thoughtful?

Well…

Then change the tool.

Here is where things get particularly interesting.

What happens when the same brain uses:

pen → keyboard → speech-to-text → AI collaboration?

If someone can explain an idea brilliantly aloud but struggles to handwrite it, what is their writing ability?

If speech-to-text allows a learner to generate richer language, did their writing improve?

If spellcheck removes enough cognitive load that they can focus on ideas, is that cheating?

If a keyboard makes revision possible without rewriting an entire page, has technology artificially improved the writing — or simply removed an irrelevant barrier?

And now:

If collaborating with AI helps someone organize their nonlinear collection of ideas into a communicable structure, what exactly has the AI replaced?

Because schools have been providing writing structures forever.

The hamburger paragraph is a prompt framework.

Sentence starters are scaffolds.

Graphic organizers are external executive-function supports.

Templates help organize thinking.

Hamburger paragraphs are scaffolds.
Sentence starters are scaffolds.
Graphic organizers are scaffolds.
Essay templates are scaffolds.
Spellcheck is a scaffold.
Speech-to-text is a scaffold.
AI can be a scaffold.

But then there’s the wonderfully uncomfortable part:

The highly structured writing we have traditionally taught students to produce is also exactly the kind of bland, predictable, formulaic writing that can trigger AI detectors.

Introduction with three points.

Three body paragraphs.

Topic sentence.

Evidence.

Explanation.

Restate the thesis.

Conclusion.

We spent decades teaching students to follow the algorithm.

Then AI learned the algorithm.

And now we’re surprised they sometimes look the same.

We generally celebrate these as good teaching.

So what makes AI collaboration fundamentally different?

Especially when our preset structures can make student writing so formulaic that the resulting prose starts looking suspiciously like the bland, predictable structures that AI detectors claim to identify.

That’s a rabbit hole for another day.

Don’t start with the diagnosis.

Dysgraphia can play the same role here that dyslexia did in Reading Different(iated) and dyscalculia did in Mathing Different(iated).

They shouldn’t be the beginning of the conversation about neurological difference.

They are evidence that we need a much bigger conversation.

Dysgraphia.

ADHD.

Autism.

Developmental Language Disorder.

Working-memory differences.

Aphantasia and hyperphantasia.

Motor differences.

Synesthesia.

Processing-speed differences.

Or no diagnosis whatsoever.

Brains are different.

So when we’re creating learner profiles, perhaps we need to ask more than:

Can this learner write?

Perhaps we should be asking:

What is their brain doing on the way to written output?

Because there is no single way that brains figure out how (and why) to write.

What is yours doing?