Written Reflection
Sally Student
9th Grade Exemplary Work Reflection
1st Semester
Humanities: English Essay: Interview Narrative
To complete this assignment, I had to plan the 8 questions I wanted to ask someone who had attended college and think about what kinds of questions would help me get the information I needed to write a good narrative. That was harder than I thought it would be. In writing the essay, I had to convert the questions and answers into a narrative instead of an interview script. It was challenging to use all of the elements of a narrative and make the essay sound fluent.
To help myself finish this assignment, I used my planner to figure out how long I could spend on each step from writing the questions and conducting my interview to writing and revising the essay. Setting deadlines for myself really helped because at first the assignment seemed overwhelming because there were so many steps. By giving myself plenty of time to write my outline and plan my rough draft, I had time to really think about what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I asked my teacher for help when I got stuck and I had a friend read over what I wrote and tell me where my writing was unclear. Going through these steps of the writing process helped me make sure I had all the pieces in my narrative that were required.
I could use these same strategies in other classes too because lots of my classes require me to do multi-step projects. Using my planner to help me chunk out the steps will make these projects feel more manageable and help me finish them on time. Getting feedback from others on my work will help me catch mistakes I make or gaps that I leave. The feedback could be on my writing like in English, but it could also be getting a friend to quiz me for a test or having a parent look at my PowerPoint to see if it makes sense or if I have any typos I missed.
I selected this essay for one of my Exemplary Works because I’m really proud of the effort I put into this assignment and of the finished product. I worked really hard on this essay planning the questions, picking the right person for the interview, and getting the writing just right. I spent a lot of time revising my essay to get all the pieces in and making it sound good. I went back and rearranged the order of some of my information to make it easier to follow and I worked hard on my word choice so that it sounded good.
I expected to get a pretty good grade because I worked really hard on the assignment, doing every step my teacher said. I wasn’t really surprised by my scores, but I was happy about them. I scored high on my writing standard which makes sense because that is where I really spent the most time making sure that I had all the parts and that what I said made sense. I didn’t score as high on conventions as I wanted, but I’m not surprised. It’s an area where I am still working to improve.
To improve on this assignment, I could have gone to Knight Academy with my rough draft and asked for help with my spelling and grammar. I know it’s something I need to get better at and ignoring it won’t help me. Going to Knight Academy would help me learn more about how to correct the mistakes I’m making and make me less likely to repeat those mistakes in my next assignments.