Entry #13: Student Learning Outcomes

Looking at the Student Learning Outcomes for this semester, I have to say that writing these blog posts have adhered to the outcomes listed on the front page of the syllabus and I say that looking particularly at the very first learning outcome listed. This outcome is, "Students will gain knowledge and competency with regards to the variety of modes, genres, and formats for reading and writing." Through these posts, we are experiencing a type of writing genre, journals, every single week by pouring out our thoughts on the different genres we are learning in class and evaluating their effectiveness for future usage in our classrooms. In past journal entries, I have expanded upon my thinking on specific genres, like biographical and persuasive writing and spoken on behalf of my knowledge of writing these genres. Through this medium, I have shown my competency in this genre by using it as a tool to process my thoughts regarding writing strategies and other genres that we have come across over the past semester.

Further, through these writing posts, I was experiencing the role of metacognition in my writing through the outcome, "Students will gain knowledge and competency with regards to the role of metacognition in writing (composing) proficiency and reading comprehension." As stated previously, the journals that we wrote here allowed me to reflect about my
thinking regarding certain genres that we talked about in class. I have thought about ways that I can use mentor

texts or other activities regarding these certain genres in my classroom for future usage. Additionally, through the "Bless, Address, Press," journal entries I was able to look at my classmates' journal entries and think about their thinking and then eventually turn it to my own thinking and examine how I think about their thoughts. It seems that as I have journeyed through these journals, more and more thoughts pop up after I write the journal entry for the allotted week as I think about how I can incorporate these journals into my future classroom. Lot's and lots of thinking going around in these blog entries! 😁

To sum it up nicely, these writing blogs have allowed me to examine, "the relationship between the writing and reading processes and the iterative nature of composition and comprehension processes." After reading the articles and chapters in Tompkins from each week, through this blog posts, I was able to pinpoint certain quotes from each chapter or page that showed my comprehension on a certain strategy or genre we read about. Reading and then writing our thoughts out in this blog as helped to fully comprehend what it is we read and note how beneficial this formatting can be when we want to test our student's comprehension on a reading that they did during class. That way, we can note the areas that seemed confusing or that they didn't understand and shift our lesson to help support those areas.