During the first few weeks of my student teaching experience, I realized I had an unclear picture of my students and where they were developmentally in the learning journey. Having an understanding of this is important, especially because I wanted to integrate more reading and writing tasks into the high school physics curriculum as a method for constructing knowledge before, during, and after inquiry activities. Writing is a key part of knowledge construction, and in order for students to engage with the higher order thinking process required in their learning, there’s a certain level of writing proficiency required. We’ve discussed the “epidemic” of students reading and writing levels not being up to grade level. So, in order to help me better recognize my students’ cognitive and linguistic development, I implemented a free writing warm-up activity. With initial data of their linguistic and cognitive proficiency from this activity, I was able to design activities and learning experiences that pushed students marginally past their current proficiency. Depending on the prompts chosen, this activity also allowed me to recognize students social and emotional learning. Student writing exhibited their feelings and perspectives on certain topics, allowing me to gain a wider perspective on who my students were as students and then to use this information to guide relevant contexts for my future learning experiences.