51 Reflection Exercise: Using Reflection and Metacognition to Develop Your Half Essay

[THIS CHAPTER REQUIRES FURTHER EDITING]

I created an exercise for first-year writing students titled Using
Reflection and Metacognition to Develop Your Half Essay because I
wanted my students to use reflection recursively, as a tool to
strengthen the analysis in their essays while they were still engaged in
writing the essays themselves. This half-essay reflection exercise is a
practical application of what Taczak and Robertson recommend in
their chapter of Yancey’s A Rhetoric of Reflection. In “Reiterative
Reflection in the Twenty-First-Century Writing Classroom: An
Integrated Approach to Teaching for Transfer,” Taczak and
Robertson write that “reflection encourages students to put what
they are learning into practice while also serving as a way to set goals
and move forward in their writing ability…more robust reflection
begins with the invention or planning stages of writing and continues
during the writing itself, in addition to involving a looking back after
the writing is completed, or at each completed draft…” (43-44).
In order to create an opportunity to incorporate this intentional
recursive reflection in the earlier stages of their writing, when it might
be most helpful, the students were asked to pause after writing the
first half of their papers and answer a series of questions to prompt
them to reflect upon what they had written. In the activity, the
students were asked to locate the most powerful moments of insight
in the half essay and then add several sentences of deeper analysis to
extend their thinking in those moments. Next, I prompted students
to reflect upon what still needed work in their essays. The students
then reflected on how effectively they were responding to the prompt,
and what other sources they could incorporate. I reminded the
students about the specific instruction in writing they had received—
the recent in-class lessons, the resources they had reviewed—and
asked them to reflect upon how they could directly apply what they
had learned when writing the second half of their papers.
Lastly, in order to emphasize the portability of this activity, I asked the
students to reflect about how they could transfer the work they did in
this exercise to future writing projects. This final element of the
activity applies three of Anne Beaufort’s “four moves teachers can
initiate… [based on] what the current research in cognitive psychology
suggests for facilitating transfer of learning.” These three
interconnected moves, as described by Beaufort in her chapter of A
Rhetoric of Reflection, “Reflection: The Metacognitive Move
towards Transfer of Learning,” are:
1. Broadly frame the course content as knowledge to go, that
is, make explicit references to broad applications for the
course content in other arenas of life… 3. Introduce reflection
about deep structures, broad concepts, and process strategies
as tools not only for getting writing done for an immediate
rhetorical situation but for transfer of learning to future
writing tasks. 4. Invite application of learning to new tasks,
drawing on mental models, deep-structure knowledge, and
an inquiry process for learning. (26-27)
I’ve been using this exercise for the past several years in first- and
second-year writing courses, and it has been gratifying to see how
positively students respond to it in class and in their feedback on my
course activities.
Time Commitment
25 minutes
Materials
Students need to bring at least half of their assigned essay, as well as
some way to write on the paper itself or access the margins of their
document online.
Activity Process
▪ First, students will locate the most powerful moments of
insight in their half essays—the most incisive, original
analysis that represents their unique contribution to the
topic. It can be inspiring for students to think of this part of
the exercise as mining their own generative ideas that drew
them to the prompt in the first place. Next, they will extend
their analysis in those places by writing 2-4 sentences of
deeper analysis of those points, right on the essay itself. Ask
students to address the implications of what they’re saying in
order to generate richer analysis.
▪ Next, students write about what still needs work in their half
essay. They can discuss grammar, argument, quotations,
analysis, introduction, transitions, etc. They need to identify
the major subject areas for them to focus on as they continue
writing the paper as well as the writing skills they are working
to improve. Ask students at this point to refer back to the
instruction in writing they have received so far in the course,
including the reference materials and texts on writing they
have studied.
▪ Now, students are asked to revisit the sources they selected
for the paper. What sources could they still incorporate in
order to enrich their treatment of this topic? Are there a few
more articles they’d like to reread and quote from in this
paper? If they were inclined to add several more sources,
what might they choose?
▪ At this point, students are asked to consider the unwritten
part of this paper and plan out the ideas they’re going to
include to finish this essay. Students are asked to locate
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something they’re looking forward to writing about in the
full draft of the paper.
▪ Next, students are asked to plan when they will finish this
paper and encouraged to manage their time so that they will
not be completing the paper under stress.
▪ Finally, students are asked to share their responses in small
groups and also spend some time in these groups discussing
how they can transfer this self-reflective work to future
writing projects. Students are reminded of the demonstrated
value of setting themselves a deadline to write part of an essay,
then following these steps to reflect upon how they can
deepen their treatment of the topic and set themselves up to
do their best work when finishing the paper.
Learning Outcomes
Students engaging in this activity will:
§ Use metacognition to gain awareness of their writing
processes and habits
§ Practice reflection recursively to develop their writing
strategies as they are engaged in a composition project
§ Expand their analytical writing abilities by using inquiry to
generate analysis
§ Recognize the portability of this activity for future writing
contexts and take ownership of transferring these learning
strategies to other coursework
Learning Accommodations
▪ Students may complete this activity after class if they need
extra time.
▪ This activity can be presented in multiple formats to include
in-person instruction and asynchronous, digital delivery.
Works Cited
Beaufort, Anne. “Reflection: The Metacognitive Move towards
Transfer of Learning.” A Rhetoric of Reflection, edited by
Kathleen Blake Yancey, University Press of Colorado,
Boulder, Colorado, 2016, pp. 23–41.
Taczak, Kara, and Liane Robertson. “Reiterative Reflection in the
Twenty-First-Century Writing Classroom: An Integrated
Approach to Teaching for Transfer.” A Rhetoric of Reflection,
edited by Kathleen Blake Yancey, University Press of
Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 2016, pp. 42–63.