TAMUCC in the morning by the road, outside Classroom East.  Photo by: feliciadz

NOTES for writing a reflective piece

The ideas and concepts behind the reflective writing we will be doing in class can be found in the book: Reflection in the Writing Classroom. By: Kathleen Blake Yancey

Yancey asks her students to think of “reflection as a means of going beyond the text to include a sense of the ongoing conversations that texts enter into (5). 

So what does this mean to you?

I want to know how you arrived at certain conclusions, what discourses are you drawing on in your literacy? This will be demonstrated by the evidence within your portfolio and explained in your reflective writing. It is imperative you inform the audience how the contents that make up your evidence were imperative to your active learning process.

Kathleen Yancey further points out that:

                                 Reflection entails a looking forward to goals we might attain, as well as a casting backward to see where we have been. When we reflect, we thus project and review, often putting the projections and the reviews in dialogue with each other, working dialectically as we seek to discover  what we  know, what we have learned, and what we might understand.

When we reflect, we call upon the cognitive, the affective, the intuitive,  putting these into play with each other: to help us understand how something completed looks later, how it compared with what has come before, how it meets stated or implicit criteria, or own, those of others (6).

This should give you freedom in your writing, there is no wrong way to reflect, but it is up to you to convey how you have been critically thinking and actively learning in the classroom.

Consider Sharon Pianko’s “Reflection: A critical Component of the Composing process” which Yancey refers to she states:

                        It is reflection which stimulated the growth of consciousness in students   

                         about the numerous mental and linguistic strategies they command and  

                         about the many lexical, syntactical, and organizational choices theymake -many

                        of which occur simultaneously -during the act of composing (4).

I am asking you to take this leap and start developing this mode of behavior which will lead to a growth in your consciousness; a consciousness about your writing process.

This is the intent, the purpose of you writing a reflective piece, introducing your portfolio to the audience.