Prompt: Begin prewriting for the portfolio reflection.
Mr. Day,
I just want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to spend almost 3 hours teaching us. I have enjoyed your class, even if I seemed too tired or a bit distracted sometimes. This class has helped me enhance my writing and helped me socially. Without this class I might not work in groups or with a partner as much. I have talked with a small group of people in the class and I have become more comfortable with them. I also have noticed how much my writing has changed and how my skills in writing have enhanced.
At the beginning of the class when we had to take the writing evaluation, I wasn’t sure how well I would do because, I knew that since high school I’ve had trouble staying focused or even becoming interested in writing papers. After we got the evaluations back, I learned that I needed to be more focused in my writing. I knew what to write but I couldn’t hit the main idea. After doing our first essay I tried to become more focused on the main topic and that is when we were given the blog post assignments. At first, I wasn’t sure about how this blog would go and I didn’t think much of them.
After we made the blogs, I realized that these blog posts we have done were to helped me with getting focused on the main idea of whatever we were writing about. My first blog post was unfocused but I knew what I was writing about. As we continued writing these posts it seemed easier and easier to write and stay focused on the main idea on the topic. These first two blog posts also helped me prepare with our first essay we had to write about an event that changed our views.
As the semester progressed I felt more comfortable with writing more blog posts and other writing assignments in the class. So, I am glad that your class has given me the focus I needed for future writing assignments I will have. Even if the semester ended quickly I still appreciate the writing practices we had, so that we could write papers better. That is how this class had helped me academically, but not did it only help me academically, your class also helped me socially.
I’m normally not a very social person, I was and still am a bit of an introvert. At the start of the semester, I wasn’t a fan of working in groups or partners. We did a lot of group talking and had to read some pages of the book as a group, and going up to the front of the room is a nightmare. It feels weird having everyone in the class look at you when you speak, but as the semester went on and I got to talk with more people it seemed easier to fit in and talk.
The essays we reviewed in a group were about a lot of controversial topics. From thieves in videogames to should organ sales be legal. Each topic had interesting points to them and interesting views. Some authors of the topics were against their cause and other authors were for their cause. I feel like these topics were good topics to read about. Each author wrote their essay in unique ways and I appreciated the way that the authors have written. My favorite essay was about the guy who had judged a whole family without even getting to know them at first.
A favorite thing we did in groups was the debate activity. After reading the essay about organ sales, the class was separated into 3 groups to debate about if organs sales should be legal or not. The three groups were, those who were for organ sales, those who were against it, and the judges. Luckily, I was a judge for this activity and there were only three judges. Each team had good arguments and had evidence to back up their statements. I thought that this activity was fun and I would do this activity again if given the opportunity to.
As we work in group projects talking about different topics from the essays in the book. I got to know some of my classmates as we conversed about the essays. It was also very fun when someone in the group would bring up a funny ideas or topics, even if it wasn’t related to what we had to talk about. I enjoyed making acquaintances in the class, and I’m glad the class encouraged groups to work together. I had a great time with talking with people, and I feel better that this class has helped me socially. I hope that this class will continue their group chats.
Again, I must thank you for taking time out of your day to teach a night class. I realized how much I have improved in my writing and how much I have improved socially. This class was fun with the group chatting and the different activities we do. Even though the class was a night class, I tried to learn the best I could. This semester has been interesting and the class didn’t seem difficult. I do hope there are more debate-like activities in future classes. I also hope that there would be more interesting topics to converse about.
That is what I have thought about the class and there have been many benefits to this class. I know that not all the students noticed the benefits but I think that this class helps a lot with writing, and this class helps with controversial topics to talk about in the future. The only problem I had was that the class was almost three hours long. I think that the class could be a tiny bit shorter and could have more fun topics to converse about, but other than that I think the class was interesting and helpful with writing.
Sincerely.
Sadie Jay
Sadie's Blog 