Metacognition: Short Story

For awhile now, we have been working on writing short stories in our English class. I had never written a short story before this experience and didn't really know what to expect when I started out. The first step we took was to write out a story fragment, which just got down some of our ideas for what we generally thought our story would be about. Then, we wrote out the beginning and middle of our story and got feedback from our teacher. After my first draft, I ended up changing basically the entire plotline of my story because I really didn't know where it was going. I found that by keeping my character, but changing the story made it better. Once we wrote our second drafts of the beginning and middle, we had to write an ending to our stories. I thought that this was the most difficult part because I really wasn't sure how I wanted to end the story and didn't know how to tell when it was over. Eventually, I think I figure it out, but I'm not sure how it will sound to other people when they read it. Hopefully my teacher will have some good advice on how to make my ending stronger.

Metacognition: Jane Eyre Writing Assignment

The Jane Eyre writing assignment was very interesting because it was done collaboratively with a partner. I'm used to doing projects with partners, but writing an essay with a partner was different. I think it seemed different because writing tends to be a more personal than a project such as making a video. Everyone has their own voice/style of writing and when somebody adds their voice into your writing, it's often uncomfortable. But, once you can get past that uneasiness, I think that adding two voices into one essay can make it a lot more interesting than it would have been if done alone. The actual collaboration process was not difficult because I was working with a partner that I trusted and knew would equally share the work with me. We found the most affective method of collaboration was to use a google doc. We also met in person twice in order to have face-to-face conversation about our essay. I think that face-to-face interaction is very important when collaborating because it allows you to express your opinions more easily than when talking online or on the phone. Overall, I think that the Jane Eyre writing assignment went pretty smoothly.