Reflections on this assignment

Dear Dr. Jones,

I hope you are doing well. Since I will be presenting on letter writing in class next week, I thought it appropriate to continue to hone my letter writing skills through framing this blog as letter to you.

It’s wild to think that eight months ago I had no concept of how to teach (or develop) reading and writing skills in elementary level students. When we first met, you asked me what grade level I wanted to work with. Since my classes at Nazareth have been geared towards working with elementary students, my eyes have been opened to the possibilities of working with this age group. At this point, I see myself either in an elementary library or a middle school library. I believe there is a level of creative thinking and wonder in these age groups (as well as an excitement for hands-on projects!), that I don’t think I would find at the high school or college level. I also discovered how much I love children’s literature, and reading it means so much more to me now that I can view it from critical lens. I want to thank you for laying the groundwork for my future professional endeavors as I continue down this path.

You’ve asked me to reflect on how keeping a blog this semester helped me reach the student learning outcomes for this course. Looking at these outcomes, I believe my blog has helped me meet them all in different ways. Writing this blog has helped me realize that writing and reading are interconnected processes, as well as the role metacognition plays in reading and writing proficiency (outcomes 4 and 5). While talking in class about a reading is one way to learn, I found that taking the time to write about my takeaways from the readings and how to apply them to my own professional life was highly beneficial. Writing this blog has been my “medium to think,” and reflect on the readings, assignments, and discussions from this course.

My favorite part of this course was learning about the genres (outcome 1)! I loved reading mentor texts as I learned the key elements of each genre and how to teach them. Through this blog, I explored the journal genre, narrative genre, and poetry genre further. I believe my writings on these genres will be a useful resource for me in the future as I introduce these genres to students.

Another big takeaway for me was learning that ANYTHING can be a mentor text, both in print and digital formats. I learned to assess texts by looking for their purpose and form, as well as the elements of author’s craft (outcome 2) or Hicks’ M.A.P.S. criteria for digital texts. While I came into this class with a fairly strong understanding of composition strategies for digital texts (outcome 3) based on my professional work, I didn’t realize that the compositions themselves (ex: video, audio) are mentor texts.

Finally, I made tremendous strides this semester is learning how to help others revise their work, by understanding the role of assessment and evaluation in determining reading and writing proficiency (outcome 6). Prior to this course, I thought evaluating student/peer work meant looking for misspelled words and grammatical errors. Now, I realize that purpose, audience, and form should take first priority when assessing/evaluating student work. The writer’s workshops have helped me hone this skill, and I had the chance to write a little about what I learned on the topic of revising work in a previous post. Since learning about the genres, I can also help look for the hallmarks of the genre in the work. For example, I helped Anna with her argumentative genre piece this week by drawing on what I learned about the structure of arguments/counterarguments from Tompkins.

While this assignment was challenging at times, I’ve never had the opportunity to evaluate academic texts at a critical level on a regular basis like this. I think this was a fitting assignment for this course and I hope to continue using “writing as a medium to think” in the future!

Sincerely,

Michelle Shippers