Posts Tagged: reflection

Mid-Assignment Reflections

These reflections help students assess their progress-to-date on an assignment. They also can be used to prompt revision. Paula Patch provided an example during her recent Teacher-Scholar presentation.

End-of-Assignment Reflections
These reflections help students consider how their work on an assignment meets course objectives. They also give students a chance to examine successful writing process strategies that they can reuse in future writing. See Barbara Gordon’s example on Blackboard, reproduced – in part – here:

Submit a reflective letter to the Evaluating Committee which addresses the following:

• Who is the audience? And how does the paper show that it is suited to that audience?
• What were you trying to do in this piece?
• Explain how all of the steps (prewriting, drafting, revising) assisted you in producing the final draft.

Mid-semester or End-of-semester Reflections
Often encourages students to connect course activities and their development as writers to course objectives. See Ashley Holmes’ example (attached).

Portfolios
By supporting ongoing revision, portfolios prompt students to continuously reflect on their progress on assignments and the rhetorical strategies that they are using. Portfolios typically include a reflective introduction that asks students to contextualize their work on assignments within the course goals and the section-specific activities.

Focus on Process
Connection to Obj. 1: Reflection tasks often encourage students to consider the steps they have taken to complete a product. In essence, these types of reflective assignments prompt explicit examination of the student’s own writing process, its strengths, and its challenges.

Focus on Rhetorical Strategies and Situations
Connection to Obj. 2: Reflections also facilitate continued examination of the purpose and audience for a text. By considering the rhetorical choices they made, students have an opportunity to track successful rhetorical strategies and to consider how their choices vary from rhetorical situation to rhetorical situation.

Focus on Capacity of Writing
Connection to Obj. 3: By considering the impact of their text on their audience and the effects of their rhetorical choices, students have a chance to examine the capacity of their writing to evoke change – even if it’s “just” by changing their audience’s understanding of a concept.