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Ruth Avila

21 July 2014
Mrs. Breanna Griego-Schmitt
English 111 .001
Learning Plan
Coming to the University Of New Mexico two days after I graduated was very
overwhelming. I never thought I was "cut" out for college because I thought I was lacking the
skills I needed. I have never gotten good grades in high school and thought I was going to fail
every class in college. After I got my ACT scores back I didn't think I would get accepted into
any college. My ACT score was a fourteen overall. I got encouragement from my family telling
me it was only your first tie talking the test just apply to UNM. They always told me "The worst
they can say is no". I always tell myself this when I'm feeling discouraged. So I applied to UNM
and was required to take two summer classes. I really didn't mind giving up my summer because
I knew I was going to be filling the gaps. Although I was missing my summer I knew this
program was a really great opportunity.
Where I Came From
In high school I was always told I wasn't a very good writer. I always had trouble in
understanding what to write about. I learned how to use MLA format but I learned that my
sophomore year and I hadn't practiced it my junior and senior year. I never wrote enough and I
usually got writers block. Some high school teachers and counselors told me I was a bad writer
and they thought I would never make it in college. I believed them for a long time then I got
some encouragement from my family members saying I wasn't such a bad writer. I still knew I
wasn't very good at writing a thesis or formatting essays very well but I really wanted to learn.
We never got much practice in high school. My junior and senior year combined I only wrote
five essays. One essay I wrote was about Obama Care for my Economics class. My teacher was
very one sided and criticized my paper dramatically. I was upset because I really like politics and
reading all about them so when he told me I had very bad writing skills I was upset. I really felt
like I needed a second opinion on my paper so I took my paper to my English teacher and he told
me I was a great writer. I didnt know what to think. Having only done so little work on essays
made me really nervous to start college. The Stretch Program has really helped me improve.

Where I am now
Taking English 111 Stretch has really helped me in so many ways such as brainstorming,
first drafts, thesis statements, peer reviews, formatting essays, and the use of rhetorical situations.
Having to write a first draft seemed to me like a complete waste of my time. Then I realized
writing an essay more than once can really improve your writing skills. Giving us time to write
an essay also gives our brains time to think and reflect on what we are writing about.
Brainstorming or writing an outline to see what you can write about really helped me become a
better writer. I don't get writers block because I know what I am going to write before I actually
write it by outlining and organizing it.
Peer reviews have also really helped me know in what direction other students in my
class are going. Peer review is when multiple students in your class read your paper and help you
revise it and see if it makes sense to them. You also make progress reading other students papers
and get a better understanding or idea on what your paper should look like. You also give other
students your opinion on their paper. I like doing peer reviews because I think it has really
helped me revise my papers. I liked being able to present one of my major writing assignments in
front of the class because I got really good feedback on what I really needed to talk about. I
really liked presenting my MWA 2 in front of my classmates because I got so much feedback
from everyone. My first draft I scored a 75 percent but when I got my feedback I knew what I
had to improve on. After I made some improvements to my final draft I scored a 95 percent and
was very impressed with my work. I finally accomplished getting a really good grade on my
final drafts.
Where I am heading in the future
This next semester I would really like to focus more on sentence structure and developing
a thesis statement. I feel like I have done well in forming my essays and need to learn more on
the structure. I am not very organized in my writing styles and would like to excel by this
coming up semester. My thesis statements are very weak and I need more practice writing them.
A thesis statement is usually a sentence or two that focuses on primarily what you are trying to
tell the reader. I usually won't make my thesis statement till the end of my essay because it helps
me visualize what my main reason is for writing my paper is. I will usually find my thesis half
way done with my essay.
Student Learning Outcomes
Rhetorical Situation and Genre
A. analyze, compose, and reflect on arguments in a variety of genres, considering the strategies,
claims, evidence, and various mediums and technologies that are appropriate to the rhetorical
situation

We used Rhetorical Situations and Genres a lot this semester. Every writing assignment
we used both. Our Rhetorical Situation for the Discourse Community is: "This class is a
discourse community and we are all new to it. Every discourse community is influenced by the
communicative knowledge, assumptions, and experiences that its members bring with them from
other discourse communities to which they belong, and this class is no exception. This
assignment gives you the opportunity to share some information about the language knowledge
that you are bringing with you as a result of your membership in other discourse communities
with other members of the class." I got this information from the rubric of the Discourse
Community. The genre for the Discourse Community is an Informative website. This really
helped me understand what was expected to be done for our Discourse Community.
Reflection
F. evaluate your development as a writer over the course of the semester and describe how composing
in multiple genres and mediums using various technologies can be applied in other contexts to advance
your goals
Reflecting back on the past semester and using several different genres has really helped
me improve on understanding them. We worked with a website, a rave review, and we wrote a
profile. Working with these has improved my writing skills and how to form them. I have never
made a website but once our instructor Mrs. Griego showed us how easy it was to use Weebly I
got the hang of it. Weebly is a free website to create a website. I never knew what a rave review
was and I was assigned to write one on my favorite restaurant so, I wrote it on The Crab Pot. I
had fun writing it because I felt like I was back at the restaurant after rereading it. I enjoyed my
summer English class. I learned to much that will help me in the future and have found skills I
never thought I had. I am excited for the next semester of English Stretch.




Learning Plan Rubric

Points Possible Points Earned Description
20
Outcomes: The writer demonstrates understanding of all nine
Student Learning Outcomes and provides examples of how they
have met the SLOs over the course of the semester.

55
Reflection: The writer describes in detail all three phases of their
composition development (where they came from, where they
are, and where they are going). The Learning Plan provides a real
plan for what the students hopes to achieve in the UNM Stretch
program, paying particular attention to examples of growth and
recognizing gaps that need to be bridged. The Learning Plan does
not simply tell the instructor what the writer thinks we want to
hear, but shows that the writer has developed an awareness of
their progress.

25
Intention: The writer has created a set of expectations for their
on-going involvement with the Stretch Program. The writer
explains how they have will or will meet those self-identified
expectations and is able to explain why they were important to
their Learning Plan. They have evaluated the ways that they
convey meaning from MWA1 to MWA2 to multimodal video MWA
revision, and they identify the skills of thinking, decision-making,
and problem solving during the creative process.



Checklist
Remember to include all the necessary paperwork when you turn in your assignment:
Final draft of Learning Plan
Grading rubric copied and pasted after the last page of your assignment (without the rubric,
you will lose 10 points)

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