 In this screencast we'll be using sticky notes to reorganize a rough draft and find connections between ideas. So if you have a rough draft written already, you can pull it out and follow along. For this strategy, a very rough draft is okay. Anything you've written down so far should work just fine. First, you'll want to find the most important ideas in your draft. What stands out to you? Go through your essay and highlight the big ideas, using different colors for different topics. My draft is about why cooking at home is an important skill for college students, so wherever I talk about health I've highlighted in green, and wherever I talk about saving money I've highlighted in yellow. You can use as many different colors as you need. When you're done highlighting, transfer your big ideas to sticky notes using the same colors as your highlights. First, I wrote my inquiry question at the top to help me remember to stay focused in my writing. Now, my green highlighted health ideas will go on green sticky notes, my orange highlighted social ideas will go on orange sticky notes, and so on. How many different topics did you find? Put each topic on its own sticky note and then add in the other main ideas that support them. Now that we can see all of the big ideas laid out, it's easier to reorganize and find connections between ideas, which will help us create a stronger and more insightful argument. For example, I said here that at home you can avoid the temptation of drinks and dessert, and I put it under the save money category. But it also fits just as well under the healthy category, so I'm going to use it to connect those two topics. And I'm going to add another big idea that ties in even more with the other ideas relating to health. At this point, if some of your sections seem to have less support, you can add more ideas. Or if some of your ideas seem out of place, you can move them or take them away. When you're ready, use your sticky notes as an outline to guide you as you write another draft. Here's what I did to connect the two topics of health and money. I gathered all my green health ideas from before and then added the idea that fit into both categories in yellow-green. Then I used it to create a transition to the next paragraph, where I said, avoiding dessert isn't the only way to save money by not eating out. So that's all there is to it. You can redraft and re-stick your notes as many times as you need to until your ideas are exactly where you want them to be.