Ask any class of thirty high school students how they feel about writing, and you'll get responses ranging from 'I love it' to 'I hate it' to 'I'm scared of it.' Those feelings dramatically affect how students approach essays, how they respond to feedback, and whether they're willing to revise. Understanding your students' relationships with writing in week one shapes how you teach assessment all year.

A simple five-to-ten minute survey that asks about writing confidence, writing experience, and past feedback experiences gives you crucial information. Students who've experienced positive feedback are more likely to respond well to your feedback. Students who see writing as a fixed ability ('I'm just not a good writer') approach improvement differently than students with a growth mindset. Understanding these patterns allows you to adjust your approach.

Questions to Include in Your Writing Survey

Keep your survey brief so students don't fatigue. Include questions like:

• On a scale of 1-10, how confident do you feel about your writing ability?
• Describe one piece of feedback you received on your writing that was actually helpful. What made it helpful?
• What's your biggest challenge when writing essays?
• What would help you become a better writer?
• When you receive feedback on an essay, what do you typically do? (Revise immediately? Read it later? Ignore it?)
• What's one piece of writing you're proud of? What made it successful?

Using Survey Results to Adjust Your Approach

Once you've collected surveys, look for patterns. If most of your class reports that they don't revise their writing, you might need to build a revision culture from scratch. If students report that past feedback was unhelpful or discouraging, you'll want to be explicitly positive and constructive in your feedback. If students report anxiety about grading, you might open by emphasizing that grades are one measure of performance, not a judgment of their ability.

You can also identify students who report low confidence and reach out individually. A quiet conversation with a struggling writer to understand their history with writing informs how you give feedback and how you build their confidence. That relationship starts in week one and pays dividends all year.

From Survey Results to Classroom Action

Address survey results explicitly in your classroom. If the survey reveals that students find grammar feedback unhelpful, explain why: 'I'm going to focus my written feedback on your ideas and organization first, because those are what make writing powerful. Grammar matters, but it's secondary to having something worth saying.' This transparency shows that you've listened and that your feedback approach is intentional.

Teachers who conduct writing surveys in September and adjust their approach based on results report higher student engagement and more willingness to take risks in writing. When students feel understood and see that their feedback preferences matter, they're more invested in improvement.