Assessment 8: Reflection and Revision Notes

• Assessment includes a short treatment (one page) about a chosen topic of interest.
• The writing program wants to see student work to understand what students are doing.

Reflection Assessment (Cover Letter)

• Reflect on what has been learned about writing.
• Consider all reading and writing done throughout the semester from the first assessment to the present.
• Think about how writing has evolved and improved from January/February to now.
• Answer a series of questions in paragraph form (one page).

Key Questions for Reflection

• How has your own writing or something you've read, including your peers' essays, influenced your ideas about how to advance a main point in writing?

  • What have you learned about thesis statements this semester?

• How has your own writing influenced your ideas about how to organize your writing?

  • What have you learned about organization (introduction, body, conclusion)?
  • How was organization used in the research project?

• How has your own writing or something you have writing from your peers essays influenced your idea about how to integrate ideas from other texts?

  • What have you learned about research this semester?
  • How was research used in the research project?

• How has your own writing influenced your ideas about how to work through the writing process?

  • What have you learned about one assignment building off of a previous assignment (scaffolding) this semester?
  • How was scaffolding used this semester?

• How is your own writing influenced your ideas how to revise your writing?

  • What have you learned about revision this semester?
  • How was revision used in the research project?

General Points

• The reflection assignment is "meta," focusing on the writing process itself.
• Each answer can be approximately one sentence.

Revisions

• Submissions can be revised until the 23rd.
• Grade on assignment will go up and the lowest grade will be removed.

Education System Discussion

• Discussion about American education system (pre-K to 12) and feelings of being cheated out of an education when entering college.
• Concerns with device usage in schools leading to distraction and laziness.
• Standardized assessments don't build thinkers and creators in students.
• The quality of education can be improved through a strategic disinvestment in standardized testing as a form of accountability.
• Need to prioritize standards over standardization.