Blog # 13: Dominic Lopez

 For this week’s blog post, I found a few noteworthy aspects of the readings that I wanted to discuss:  

1.) I thought it was interesting that the text discussed the issues that can arise when students work on writing projects in a group. Notably, one of the major issues is that if students aren’t reading each other’s writing contributions and if they aren’t communicating with each other throughout the writing process, then they risk not knowing how to present the information from their writing when they do their presentations. They may write things that contradict each other’s writings. They may also write too little in their sections which can weaken the overall strength of the other arguments throughout the paper. 

2.) I really like the idea of assigning portfolios of all the written work a student has done throughout their time in a class. It gives students the opportunity to assess the writing that they have done throughout a course and understand better how they approach the writing process. It shows them how they have improved as a writer and which areas of their writing they can still improve in. It also gives teachers a better perspective on how the student has progressed with their writing throughout the course and where they can improve in their writing in the future. I also like the idea of having students choose which writing assignments they want to include in their portfolios to assess and to be able to choose a writing assignment that they want to revise as an end of the course assignment. Again, this helps students become more aware of which writing pieces that they have done were well-written and to recognize when their writing requires improvement. It gives them more practice with revising their writing as well.  

3.) I think it’s really important to have students write an end of the course evaluation of their writing courses both for themselves and for the teacher that is teaching writing. It provides students the opportunity to determine whether the writing assignments and writing lessons they undertook during a course were effective in improving their writing. It helps the teacher evaluate how successful the strategies they are using to teach writing are working for their students. Students are able to reflect on how they go about the writing process and how their writing process has improved. It also gives them more practice with writing for different types of genres since writing a course evaluation requires a different type of approach when writing. Additionally, it gives them more practice with reflecting on the writing process itself and becoming aware of their writing process as they write.