reflection – Page 5 – The Secret Language of Comics

The writing process for this literacy narrative went better than I thought it would. Since middle school, I have written more book analyses and scientific reports than creative, personal writing pieces. The freewriting exercises we did prior to this assignment definitely helped with my creative flow. I had brainstormed and put down a lot of descriptive details about the events I included. When it came time to start writing, I was easily able to write the parts of the narrative about my experience in detail. However, it was trickier to write opening and closing lines because I wanted to make interesting points that drew the reader in and left them satisfied.

“Some things may have changed, but the feelings I had originally felt during our visits instantly returned every time I stepped foot into the building.” This is one of the most interesting lines from my narrative. It reminded me that I am a reflective and nostalgic person. I think it was somewhat easier to talk about my previous experiences with reading and writing because I reflect on my memories from the past on a regular basis. I tend to remember things I experienced in greater detail than other people who were with me who barely remember anything. While writing my narrative, I found it both comforting and sad to reminisce about my childhood and all of the fun memories I have from that time.

Literacy Narrative: Writing About Me

February 8, 2021 Abby Student Posts

At first I was very stressed about this writing assignment. I am an analytical writer. The formulaic method is comfortable for me. All types of creative writing are out of my comfort zone. Starting with the free-write exercise helped immensely. I was able to get my story ideas down as well as describe them from all the specific questions (something I struggle with). You will read about a core childhood memory and a recent school memory and how I found them to be similar. While writing this narrative, I learned that I am able to enjoy reading and writing if I can somehow tailor it to myself. What’s ironic is that writing this literacy narrative, itself, proved the point of my paper. Because I wrote about myself and memories I love sharing, I enjoyed writing it. I have limited myself to analytical writing to “get by.” Hopefully now I can practice different styles to improve my writing altogether.

Literacy Narrative Reflection

January 14, 2021 David Assignments

Once you have published your literacy narrative as a page on your site, you’ll need to also publish a post about the narrative that links to the page (how to add a link in a post or a page). That post serves three fundamental functions:

it provides a compelling preview of your narrative that summarizes your controlling idea in a sentence or two;
it reflects on what you have learned in the process of writing your literacy narrative;
when your post syndicates to the class site, that constitutes turning in your narrative.

Some questions to consider in your reflection:

What was your writing process for this narrative like? Did it feel strange for you to do the freewriting exercises first? How did the freewriting influence the essay you eventually wrote?
What did you learn about yourself by the end of writing your narrative? Was there anything that you found surprising, or something about yourself that you came to view differently in the process of writing this essay?
What sentence from your essay do you think someone else reading it would identify as the most interesting sentence?

Halfa Kucha Reflection

January 4, 2021 David Sketches

Due: Friday 4/16

Export your halfa kucha slideshow as a set of images (in Powerpoint: File > Export… and then in File Format select jpeg and “save every slide.” Powerpoint will create a subfolder where you tell it to and save each of your ten slides as images). Then in your WordPress dashboard create a new post and upload those images to a Slideshow block.

Then write a couple of paragraphs reflecting on the process of writing and then giving the presentation. How was it different to construct an argument that you were giving to the class as a presentation than to write an essay? How did you make choices about the structure of your argument? If you made a choice to organize your presentation in a certain way so that your audience would follow it more clearly, is that something that you could also make use of in your written work? Was your analytical thinking process any different?

What decisions did you make about the visuals for your presentation? How did you go about creating an impact for the slides that accompany your spoken words?

What did you learn by giving this type of presentation, where you had no control of the timing of the slides and couldn’t put much in the way of text on your slides, as compared to other presentations you have given? What did you notice about your classmates’ presentations that you might think about incorporating into your own presentations in the future?

Halfa Kucha assignment prompt

Tracing Stitches and Spinning: Reflection

January 3, 2021 David Sketches

Once you have completed your Tracing project and published the pages to your site, you need to publish a reflection post as well. The post serves to turn the project in when it syndicates to the class site, and is also an opportunity for you to explain your process in the work you just completed.

Your reflection post should link to the main page for your project and also to the assignment prompt. Tell us in the post what the thesis of your essay is and give a one or two sentence preview of your argument.

You should also address the following questions:

Before writing your essay, you went through a pretty involved process of tracing and annotating two pages from the books. Briefly explain what that process was like for you — probably this was very different from most other writing you’ve done, so try to explain what was useful about the process for you. What productive thoughts or analysis occurred through the act of tracing and annotating?
For this assignment, I asked you to be very conscious of writing an inductive essay with your thesis at the end, which is probably a pretty foreign way to structure an essay for you. How did your writing process change to address this assignment?
This assignment is a close reading exercise focused on identifying aspects of the “secret language of comics,” the series of choices the authors make in crafting comics that probably pass by many readers with little or no conscious notice. Do you feel that this assignment helped you to get in on this secret language? Do you understand Stitches and Spinning better after having written this project? What’s the single biggest insight you gained about the two books during the process of tracing, annotating, and analyzing these pages (maybe something you “knew” on some level before you started but that you really get now, or maybe something you hadn’t really noticed until you worked on the project)?

Literacy Narrative Comic Reflection

January 3, 2021 David Sketches

Now that you’ve completed your Literacy Narrative Comic, publish a reflective blog post of about 500 words about the writing process, paying special attention to how the work you have done has helped you to meet the Learning Outcomes for this class. That post should link to the page with your literacy comic.

Some other questions you might respond to: How was it different to write your literacy narrative as a comic? How did you think differently once the visual component was added? How did that help you to see the story you were trying to tell in different terms? Was your analytical thinking process any different? How have your thoughts about your alphabetic literacy narrative changed in the process of transforming it into a comic?

I’d also like you to discuss choices you made in creating your comic and to explain why you chose the way you did. Especially if there’s something you were really trying to do in your comic which you felt you couldn’t realize as perfectly as you would if you had a lot more time, more resources, or if you could have hired an illustrator to turn your vision into exactly what you wanted. If there are aspects of your comic where you have a clear sense of what you were trying to accomplish and how you would have done so if some things were different, then explain that in your reflection. Doing so allows you to demonstrate that you have the knowledge you need about this sort of writing even if you have not yet developed all the skills necessary to make that knowledge visible in the final artifact you’ve produced