Over the past few years, I have given less and less feedback on writing out of necessity due to large numbers, the desire to turn work around quickly, and the commitment to not grading at home. My feedback has for a while been row by row numbers for an AP essay with a Glow and Grow comment; for on-level students, I am much more involved in the process with minimal feedback throughout. For more on the reasons why I have shifted, Brian’s post “Comments are a Bad Idea” offers good food for thought on the subject.
The same time I was shifting to less feedback, I also started incorporating student self-assessment, reflection, and metacognitive activities with their writing. While these terms are often used interchangeably, they are slightly different.
- Reflection: looking back on a piece of writing in order to provide feelings on their writing
- Self-assessment: students scoring or measuring their work against a rubric or standard
- Metacognition: a reflective tool that focuses on the thinking process during writing
Often the reflective (using as an umbrella term) activities I ask students to do a combination of these. I’ve written before on metacognition and have made my self-assessment tools available for free, so this is not anything new. I am a firm believer that students can and should be doing some of the heavy lifting in thinking about their writing; it’s not just the teacher’s job.
Today, however, I want to share two easy ways to build in reflection along with student examples (always shared anonymously and with permission). This week my students had two opportunities to respond to their writing in two different ways. Both of these require almost no planning and are a really valuable use of student time. Here’s what we did.
Assignment 1: Mentor Poem
Students wrote a poem inspired by a poem from Clint Smith’s Counting Descent. The assignment requires students to select a poem they want to use as a model, take notes on their chosen poem, write their own poem inspired by the mentor poem, and finally write a reflection examining the choices they made as a writer.
I would argue that the reflection may be the most important part of this assignment. The slowing down and forcing students to think about their process and craft provides for true internalization of the skills they have been learning about during the poetry unit. Here are three samples with their original poem: two include reflection while the other includes the notes.
Sample 1:
Ode to the Only Black Girl in Class
(Mentor Poem: Ode to the Only Black Kid in Class by Clint Smith)
You, it seems, are a manifestation
of several lifetimes of toil.
Having the worst of both worlds
Walking into the classroom almost
feels like walking onto a stage
where you are alone with a bright
white light beaming on you with
the heat of a thousand suns
You are deemed expert on all things
Beyonce, Megan the Stallion and Nicki Minaj.
Girl, weren’t you in the studio with them?
Too Masculine and Too Feminine all at once
You are accepted by everyone until you are not
Built in slang translator
Hair encyclopedia
Diversity week project leader
Classroom distraction
Overachiever with an attitude
If you succeed, they think its because of you looks
If you fail, your entire race fails with you.
You are invisible until you are the butt of the joke.
Here you are a sheep in a petting zoo before the
render you an ape, before they call you a beast,
before they forget you were ever human
Reflection:
One of the ways I followed the mentor poem was by using the “stereotype stacking” technique Smith used in his poem. In his poem he mentions several funny but also deep stereotypes about black men like “Hip-hop lyricologist” and “Presumed athlete” . In my poem I mention stereotypes about educated black women that aren’t really noticed or talked about among non-minorities, such as “Diversity week project leader” and “Overachiever with an attitude”. Another way I followed the mentor poem was by using the first two lines in Clint Smith’s poem. “You, it seems, are a manifestation of several lifetimes of toil.” – this line is so powerful to me because it pretty much shapes up what all black people have gone through in America over the past few centuries. I feel that every person of color can relate to this and this line kind of sets the tone for the rest of the poem(for both Smith’s and mine). Another main way I nodded at the mentor poem was by describing almost the process of the feeling of disappearance in the eyes of a black person. While Smith uses “Here you are star before they render you an asteroid. Before they watch you turn to dust.”, I used “Here you are a sheep in a petting zoo before the render you an ape, before they call you a beast, before they forget you were ever human”. In both poems this slow disappearance shows how society treats people of color as they slowly become useless to them. However in my poem, I used this also as a reference to the “angry black woman” stereotype.
Sample 2:
Original Poem: “For the Taxi Cabs that Pass Me in Harvard Square” Clint Smith
New Poem: “For the Anxiety that Follows Me Everywhere”
For the anxiety
that shows up uninvited,
already sitting in my chair before I walk in the room
like it’s been waiting on me.
All day.
For the anxiety
that makes my thoughts feel like rush hour traffic,
a thousand cars honking inside my brain,
but no one is moving forward.
For the anxiety
that makes ordering food feel like a broadway performance,
that makes “how are you?” sound like
an FRQ I don’t know how to write.
For the anxiety
that convinces me my friends are tired of me,
that every missed call,
is actually a clear message.
For the anxiety
that stays up with me past 3 a.m.,
replaying everything I did wrong today,
as if tomorrow won’t be just as hard.
For the anxiety
that is both too much and never enough,
that shouts in a crowded room.
Yet, I am the only one who hears.
For the anxiety
I am not writing this to thank you.
I am writing this because i hear you,
but I refuse to make you
the only sound.
Reflection:
My poem follows the poem by Clint Smith by following his use of repetition along with his personification of his feelings to help the reader understand the feeling written in the poem. The repetition of the phrase, “For the anxiety,” mimics Smith’s use of “For the taxi cabs”. This makes the poem feeling it constantly circles around the same feeling of anxiety as in Smith’s poem, stereotyping. Secondly, I used personification, framing anxiety as a living presence that waits for me and follows me through my daily life. By giving anxiety human traits, the poem mirrors Smith’s way of addressing the taxi cabs, making both experiences have a deeper impact on the reader. Lastly, I mimicked Smith’s stanza and line break structure of his poem. By using his stop and go rhythm, it helps to break down the more important parts of the poem, and reinforce the feelings of up and down that anxiety can bring in each stanza. I also used imagery throughout the poem to further the impact of anxiety and the reckless nature of anxiety. These choices reinforce the thematic idea of my poem by showing that even though anxiety feels loud, putting it into words allows it to not consume you. Sample 3:
Original poem: The Bear Responds to the Man
Mentor poem: The Protest Novel Responds to James Baldwin
I included this poem because I love it so much but left the reflection at school so I don’t have that to share but am sharing the notes that the student took on the mentor poem. This part of the process is also important (just not the focus of this post).
Content:
- Written as a response to James Baldwin’s ideas about protest novels.
- Discusses race, representation
- Challenges stereotypes
- Personal but still widespread opinions
- Encourages readers to think critically of stereotypes [right edge cut off]
Structure:
- Free verse
- A direct response to someone
- Using repetition and parallel sentences
- Long ideas broken into lines
- Builds an argument throughout the poem
Language:
- Conversational and reflective tone
- Clear, direct diction instead of complex vocab[ulary; right edge cut off]
- Thoughtful analysis
- Includes rhetorical questions and repeated phra[ses; right edge cut off]
- Blends personal voice with societal opinions
My Topic:
The Bear Responds to the Man
The Bear is responding to the men who are offended by the Man vs. Bear and states how that comparison says more about society than the bear.
The Bear Responds To The Man
You seem offended that they chose me. As if I started the comparison. As if I was the one who placed us side by side in the middle of the forest and asked the question. I’ve heard what they’re saying. I know my name has become shorthand for danger. I know children learn to fear my teeth before they ever see them. But when they choose me, they don’t do it because I’m harmless. They do it because they know who I am. A bear doesn’t hide behind kindness before becoming violent. A bear doesn’t need praise for doing the bare minimum. A bear doesn’t spend years insisting that fear itself is the real problem. If I attack, the story’s simple. The newspapers call me a bear. The forest calls me a bear. Nobody asks what I was warned. No one wonders whether the warning signs were misunderstood. No one suggests I was only trying to be friendly. You seem angry at women for choosing the bear. But I think your anger is looking in the wrong direction. I think you should be asking what happened to make my claws be predictable but your intentions seem uncertain. I think you should be asking why believe that knowing the danger is safer than guessing it.
Assignment 2: Poetry Essay Reflection
When I returned student essays on their first poetry essay, I immediately asked students to reread their essay and answer the following questions in their writer’s notebooks:
- What initially stands out on the reread?
- What’s the strongest part of this essay? Why? – be specific
- What can be improved upon? How? Be specific.
- Record your favorite sentence in the essay in your notebook. Why do you like it?
Sample 1
What initially stands out to me is how solid my front page was. I think I had a good thesis, strong topic sentences/claims to start my paragraphs, and I really like the vocabulary I used early on in my essay.
The strongest part of my essay was definitely my first body paragraph. I feel this way because I know when I was writing it that I was not rushing. Also, it is not repetitive, is a good length, and has balanced evidence and commentary. It’s a very solid start.
As far as improvement I think I need to invest in a watch, so that I can have better time management skills. The end of my essay (really everything after my first and maybe second paragraph) I am not pleased with. I don’t think I fully unpacked first piece of evidence in my second paragraph. I also don’t think my commentary was very good and it felt repetitive. It is to be noted that I also was not very nuanced. I think this essay was more one dimensional than my first one. And I didn’t even recognize that I didn’t explore the other emotions the author may have felt after recounting memories through music.
My favorite parts of my essay are:
- “when she cannot explicitly recall a moment or feeling she can rely on something that has been marinated into her bones to communicate for her.”
- “The discussion of music being ‘sealed into the grooves like fact’ exemplifies this as though her father is still within her genetically, the substantial piece of him that she can lean on is etched in the grooves of her bones that make up her very being.”
- “When she has forgotten the memories and how to grieve she can breathe and with that breath comes the hums of songs that will help formulate her feelings.”
Sample 2
1) I think the inconsistency of my analysis was the main thing that stood out to me. I had a really strong understanding of the insight I wrote about in the first body paragraph, but don’t think I fully had an understanding of the second insight before writing so it was a lot weaker.
2) I think the strongest part was my first body paragraph. I started my paragraph off with an insight before following it up with two pieces of evidence that fully support the claim. I think me actually connecting the evidence and analysis I made to both the topic sentence AND a broader term. By connecting it to scientists, I showed my sophisticated understanding of the topic, so much that I could think of it in a different point of view.
3) I can do a much better job of analyzing my evidence within my second body paragraph. I feel like instead of going into detail when analyzing the evidence, and THEN transitioning to my second piece, before finally connecting it to the bigger argument, I kind of used the analysis time to transition between evidence and then just abruptly stopped.
4) My favorite sentence is “The poem ‘Shaving’ by Richard Blanco follows a simple task that is viewed to be much deeper by the narrator. Blanco creates this sensation by implementing many literary techniques that create an emotional, complex piece that truly explores the process of generational grief and masculinity while bringing in the cycle of nature in just a short poem.” I like that this sentence answers the small, medium, and large parts of the prompt.
Susan Barber teaches AP® English Literature and Lit Comp III at Midtown High School in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the coauthor of The Norton Guide to AP® Literature: Writing & Skills (2022) and 100% Engagement: 33 Lessons to Promote Participation, Beat Boredom, and Deepen Learning in the ELA Classroom. Susan is most proud of the work she does on a daily basis in E216 and never tires of the beauty and chaos of the classroom.
