Reflection as a Thinking Tool
The benefits of student reflection for both writer and teacher
I don’t really vibe with that when I’m writing
Funny? Yes.
Sarcastic? I’m pretty sure.
An English student becoming a writer by developing a voice while expressing personal insights through reflection about her writing process? Absolutely.
To put the above sentence in context, I tasked the student’s class with revising, sentence by sentence, a few paragraphs from an already completed essay. I gave the students a handout on various sentence-level techniques, ran them through three different revision strategies, and then had them submit the newly revised essay. And just before the students pressed the submit button in our classroom management software, I gave them a maximum of five minutes to write a reflection about their preferred revision strategy and the task of revising each and every sentence in a paragraph.
As further context, I have been wrestling with my own question from earlier this year: “What is the relationship between feedback and evaluation: what is the effect of providing advice, what is the effect of scoring or ranking a piece of writing?” And over the first eight weeks of school, I have actually addressed the question by ignoring it, instead focusing on the benefits of student reflection by asking my junior students to write for 1–5 minutes once or twice a week on all aspects of writing. In this post, I want to comment upon one student’s reflection and the benefits I see for both of us, teacher and student.
( note: the student’s reflection was written as a full paragraph, I have broken it up for purposes of analysis, the student’s words are italicized)
I preferred the individual sentence revision, because I felt like it was easier to try a lot of different things out, and it turned into better sentences overall, because they matched the vibe of the essay a little bit better.
In this part, the student expressed her preference for one of the three types of revision strategies I asked the class to practice. The entire grade was split three ways between the three choices of revision, which showed me how to proceed next time: remind them of the three types and suggest that they split into like-minded groups. I don’t know that every student will remember which technique they preferred, but I can also point them to their own reflection as a tool for asking them to pick the most effective feedback group, rather than the one their friends want to join. Written reflection serves both as a feedback to me and a reminder to them of their own preferences.
I think sentence-level revision was pretty hard for me, because utilizing the different sentence structures is one thing, but actually making it work well in the essay was quite another. It was also a little bit difficult, because since I was the writer of this essay, I grew a little bit attached to my words, and it was pretty difficult to change them and be happy with the changes.
Again, the student reflects upon herself as a writer and her writing process preferences: if this reflection is any indication, she knows that she likes to work alone but that she will be reluctant to make changes. Which in turn can feed my instruction, in the next revision cycle, I can ask her to find the balance between working alone versus finding a reading partner who could push her to accept revisions.
I also had some difficulties because it was so structured, and I don’t really vibe with that when I’m writing. I’m a major proponent of breaking the rules in writing, but you have to know the rules to break the rules so overall I think it was a helpful exercise. Even so, I do think it added a little bit to my essay, and I really like some of the sentences I added.
And in the final part of the reflection, I gain valuable feedback as a teacher knowing that this student, like half her classmates, felt that the structured activity was limiting or confining. Yet the student acknowledges the potential value of the exercise and I suspect that I will share this comment with the class to help them articulate the balance between not always enjoying writing exercises but learning to see the value in them. This final comment also poses a serious question to the student and her classmates: how can they learn to identify when to use the sentence structures and which ones to use to improve their writing?
This is but one reflection and, combined with the other students’ reflections, offered me valuable insight into my students’ writing process and enabled me to better plan the next revision cycle: giving students clear options at various stages and directing them towards successful choices based on both their stage of writing and personal preferences.
Similar reflections during writing assignments have helped me personalize feedback to students about their individual writing. For example, the student who wrote the reflection above noted her struggle with the organization of a draft and I was able to provide her a short, quick answer describing what I thought she was trying to accomplish.
Student reflection need not be time-consuming, I have allotted a maximum of five minutes of class time to written reflection, nor a burden, I have projected reflection prompts on to the classroom screen and rejected all clarifying questions. But I have found that this self-reflection on the part of students is enabling me to ignore assessment and to give much better feedback, based on the expressed thoughts of my students.
What remains, however, is the question of assessment: how and when to judge these reflective, thoughtful, witty students?
