Entry 13: Student Learning Outcomes

 

Upon reviewing the Student Learning Outcomes for this course, I can conclude that keeping a blog this semester has helped me meet outcomes. The first outcome Students will gain knowledge and competency with regards to the variety of modes, genres, and formats for reading and writing in particular stood out to me. Blogging was a completely different mode of writing for me. It took me awhile to get into it but once I did, I really enjoyed it! Blogger is a great website and platform for blogging. I love being able to add c o l o r to my text and include pictures to my reflections. My blog acted as a journal for the semester. The act of blogging lies in the journal genre because we are pouring our ideas and reflecting on each of the genres we learned about in class. In my past entries, I have reflected on my learning and applications to teaching of letter, biography, poetry, and persuasive writing genre. I addressed elements of author’s craft within each of these genres based on what I read in Tompkins (2012) and the knowledge I acquired through participation in each group Genre Expert Workshop. This also addresses the second outcome: Students will gain knowledge and competency with regards to the role of purpose and audience in writing and reading and the elements of author’s craft used to address the desired purpose(s) and audience(s).

The third outcome: Students will gain knowledge and competency with regards to the cognitive processes and strategies of reading and writing, including the composition strategies used in crafting and comprehending texts is also addressed through blogging. Keeping a blog throughout the semester challenged me to think about my thinking- metacognition. Through my entries, I had to evaluate my prior knowledge about genres and then synthesize new learning to think about teaching application. The exploration of mentor texts and their use in supporting author’s craft during instruction about genres was also represented in my entries. I also thought a lot about the thinking of my classmates in the bless, press or address entries. The process of reading through my peers' blogs gave me quite a few ah-ha moments. It was cool to see how we all focused on different things within one genre. The bless, press or address entries really pushed me to explore my classmates’ blogs and find something to write about that was of interest to me. I really liked all of the choices that this assignment had worked in as well.

Journal writing through blogging will make its way into my instruction. It’s an engaging way for students to express themselves in a way that is very “now.” Even the most reluctant learners will buy into this if they have the right supports. I’m thinking I will use blogging for 2-way communication with students or as a place for students to write journals as characters in the books that we’re reading. Thank you Dr. J for introducing this to us! This is such a valuable tool that I’m excited to use in the future!😁