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#700, v1.0 Published:
#1240, v1.0 Published:

Title

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1Reflective Writing 1Reflective Writing - 2-page handout & Teaching Notes

Authors

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1Jeremy M Wojdak (Radford University) 1Jayme Dyer ()
2Arietta Fleming-Davies (QUBES; Radford University) 2Jayme Dyer ()
3Hayley Orndorf (University of Pittsburgh)   

Description

Old VersionNew Version
1<p>Many students get tense, anxious, or nervous when they face math problems. Besides being unpleasant, anxiety creates a negative feedback loop - when anxiety uses some attention or memory, there is less left over to handle the math they are asked to do. By acknowledging anxiety or worry students have about performing math, or taking a test, beforehand, they can &quot;clear their mind&quot; of those worries and leave more working attention and memory allocated to the math tasks themselves. Researchers discovered that simply writing about their feelings for as little as seven minutes before they start a math task can really boost student performance (Park et al. 2014) - after reflecting on their worries, people with high levels of anxiety perform more like those with no math anxiety!</p>  1<p>I used shortened the handout to be 2 pages. I used the powerpoint as-is.</p>
2  2  
3<p>This activity introduces the research showing a benefit of reflective writing, and then uses a modified version of the prompt from Park et al. to provide practice. Students can be given this handout ahead of time, and/or introduced to the benefits of reflective writing in class with the Powerpoint version. The activity is most effective if instructors then follow up by asking students to write reflectively for ~7 minutes before a midterm in the course. The handout &ldquo;Reflective writing exam prompt&rdquo; can be used on the day of the exam.</p> 3<p>Included are my teaching notes.</p>
   4
   5<p>Note: the teaching notes (Word doc) covers both an overview of how I implemented several BIOMAAP resources in my course, as well as how I implemented this particular resource.</p>
   6
   7<p>Here are my notes for Reflective Writing:</p>
   8
   9<p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:
   10bold">I shortened the handout to fit on 2 pages to reduce paper waste. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
   11
   12<p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:
   13bold">Students read the handout in class &ndash; first they read to the end of the first page (about the experiment) and we discussed it. Then they read to the end of the second page and we discussed it together. Then they practiced writing about their feelings for 5 minutes (that same day in lecture they had a quiz, so I asked them to write about how they felt before that quiz). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
   14
   15<p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:
   16bold">They did reflective writing &ldquo;for real&rdquo; the next lab period when they took their lab exam. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
   17
   18<p style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:
   19bold">I don&rsquo;t have evidence about whether the activity helped them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
   20
   21<p>&nbsp;</p>

Attachments

1 file — ./Reflective Writing/BIOMAAP_reflective_writing.1.1.pptx 1 file — BioMAAP_reflective_writing_2page.docx
2 file — ./Reflective Writing/BioMAAP_reflective_writing1.3.docx 2 file — publication_790_1354/Reflective Writing/BIOMAAP_reflective_writing.1.1.pptx
3 file — ./Reflective Writing/BioMAAP_reflective_writing_InstructionGuide.1.1.docx 3 file — publication_790_1354/Reflective Writing/BioMAAP_reflective_writing_InstructionGuide.1.1.docx
4 file — ./Reflective Writing/reflective_writingDarwinletter.jpg 4 file — publication_790_1354/Reflective Writing/reflective_writingDarwinletter.jpg
5 file — Teaching_Notes_BioMAAP_reflective_writing1.3-2156.docx