What is the ICED Writing Strategy?

What is the ICED Writing Strategy?

Abbreviated for Idea, Citation, Explanation and Defense of Thesis (ICED); the ICED writing strategy helps students to improve the quality of their writing assignments. This strategy teaches students how to strengthen the content (body paragraphs) of their essays and other similar writing assignments.

Why use the ICED writing strategy in the classroom?

Typically, essay writing is an expression of a student’s comprehension of a topic and the use of their higher cognitive skills such as researching, critical reasoning, reflection and synthesis of information. Students are expected to create quality writing that supports or justifies using relevant examples, evidences and citations.

However, students often struggle with the correct usage of their skills resulting in assignments that:

• Lack good examples, evidences and citations to substantiate the content
• Are a textual replica instead of an expression of their own individual thoughts or ideas
• Fail to demonstrate their understanding of the subject and do not connect their ideas with the focus of the topic

The ICED strategy helps students overcome these obstacles. It provides them with a framework for researching, analyzing and elaborating on a topic and empowers students with the confidence to frame their own ideas and thoughts.

Understanding the ICED writing strategy:

The different elements of this strategy help students clearly explain and expand the content in each paragraph while keeping it connected to the topic in focus. The elements of the ICED strategy further explained are the following:

I-Ideas: It stands for the topic sentence in each paragraph that connects or supports the thesis.

C-Citations: It calls for the inclusion of relevant and important textual or other evidence for each idea written. The evidence should reflect the focus of the thesis and can be a direct quote, paraphrased information or even a personal example. These evidences should provide additional information supporting the ideas incorporated in the content. Words such as “For example, instance, consider and so forth” are used to illustrate a citation.

E-Explanation: The explanations help to connect the ideas with the citations or the evidences. Ordinarily students are vague with their explanations as they assume that the reader (teacher) knows everything. They are to be specifically instructed not to assume so, and to provide detailed explanations for their content.

D-Defense of Thesis: This is the sentence that connects the entire paragraph to the thesis and is usually the last sentence.

The ICED writing strategy in the classroom

Assign students into small groups of 3-4 members and give each group an ICED strategy handout. This handout can include a brief description of each element along with a worksheet template to be filled in. The strategy is best introduced by scaffolding, as it helps to increase the students’ understanding and their confidence in applying the technique when alone.

Give each group of students a writing sample to read through. After teaching about the element Ideas, have students read through the paragraphs, identifying the main ideas that have been included in the reading they were given. Instruct them to note down these ideas in their worksheet in the column titled Idea. Continue doing the same with the other elements. Students can be instructed to note down each citation and explanation under the specific “idea” that it supports. If they are unable to find any relevant citations or explanations have them mark it down as “—-” indicating that further research is required.

After filling out the worksheet, guide students on how to write a correct paragraph using the worksheet as a reference. This understanding of the strategy will help them when writing their own paragraphs and writing assignments.

Thus students can improve their writing skills, writing process and quality of their writing by relying on the ICED writing strategy as an organizational tool (preparing drafts of their writing assignments) and as a checklist (reviewing their assignments for quality before submission.)