Teaching Reflective Writing

I decided not to grade the first blogs about the novel responses on content because I had not really taught my students how to reflectively write about what they read. I've noticed that a lot of novel responses are superficial and unfocused, but that should not surprise me because I did not teach them what to do, yet. I told them that starting next blog, I would grade for content because I will teach them how to write reflectively this week.

I want them to show higher level thinking in their responses and today I gave them a copy of Bloom's Taxonomy and the different levels of questions. I don't expect that it means anything to them, yet. But by the end of this week, I hope they see the need and how to go beyond knowledge and understanding and deeper into application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. One way that I'm trying to teach higher order thinking and reflective writing in conjunction is by teaching them how to ask questions. If they can ask probing, thoughtful questions, they will apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate when they answer them. So, my plan is to teach them how to dive deep into some of my favorite poems.

The first poem we discussed is "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks. I'm going to try to write it below from memory. The way it so effortlessly flows makes it easy to remember. Here goes...

We Real Cool

Seven Pool Players
At the Golden Shovel

We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight.

We sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
die soon.

(Sorry, Ms. Brooks, if I made any mistakes.)

I've run out of time tonight to finish this post. I'll write more later about our discussion of this poem.

TO BE CONTINUED...