Meredith McKinnie and Tabitha McBride
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
In the first-year writing classroom, often populated by a growing number of first-generation college students, the student’s expectation is to respond to assignment prompts as knee-jerk reactions to instructor-curated assignments. While these assignments foster development of the writing process, students can engage these assignments absent of any awareness or inclination toward a writing identity. To come to know oneself in any capacity requires intensive and continual reflection, followed by corrective action. The introductory writing course should allow space for students to explore themselves as writers, to articulate what they understand about writing and to address writing insecurities. Toward this end, we propose a student-composed reflection journal that focuses on the writing process. The proposed drafting journal would allow students to articulate emotions, thoughts, and concerns throughout the drafting process. By engaging in reflection via the drafting journal, students can begin to locate and articulate a writing identity, advancing student agency and self- awareness, ultimately facilitating self-discovery through writing. The journal also serves as a documentation of the writing process which mitigates the use of AI text generators in and out of the classroom.