Writing-to-learn activities are crucial for a successful and engaging learning process and often serve multiple purposes. Among other, they help students think through key ideas and concepts presented in a course. But there are some difficulties with assessing these texts because they are informal and often improvisational. Writing-to-learn activities should not be evaluated for correctness – more appropriate would be to read the paper for a general sense of what students understand and don’t understand. If considering writing as a lens into student understanding of content, a lens to view the writing process, and a lens to view writing products, then it should be evaluated in the same aspects. Since students receive knowledge in the same environment, their writing-to-learn tasks should be evaluated in comparison with a large group of peers to determine if a student’s writing meets grade-level standards. Also, it would be appropriate to determine the specific strengths and weaknesses of a student’s task. It may help with fairer evaluation, as it allows to look at the work not as content but more thoroughly.
I am most interested in adding literary essays to my classroom. This type of text is not too short, so it makes it possible to fit all your ideas into it and fully reveal them. In addition, it is the fairest and easy to evaluate type of texts since its writing does not require specific talents that poetry or graphics may need. It is also essential to ensure that activities or teaching points are as meaningful as possible to students. Activities and points I want to cover during writing time within this selected genre are communication and creativity. In today’s digitalized knowledge society, writing is a crucial skill for accessing and maintaining social relations, civil rights, democratic influence, and successful professional life (Krogh & Jakobsen, 2019). One strategy for encouraging and developing this skill is literary essay writing. I can better explain my ideas and communicate clearly and effectively through writing.
References
Krogh, E. & Jakobsen S. K. (2019). Understanding young people’s writing development: identity, disciplinarity, and education. Routledge.