When writing your written reflections (150 words per poem and about 250 words for your non-fiction article), you must consider commenting on the following:   

• your central thematic concern (the main big idea your piece explores and what you want your readers to appreciate about it by the end ) 

• What source material inspired your work: the ideas you found in your research and exploration like David Attenborough's 'A Life on Earth' or any of the texts you have read as part of our work on Our Fragile Environment. 

    

• the motifs and imagery you have used to express these ideas - give an example (quote your own work and explain your intended effect on your readers) 

• Structure and style:  how is your poem or article structured? Did you use a frame from another poet's work? How did you adapt or modify it and why?  Do you use some central techniques?  Parallelism? Juxtaposition? Export opinion or statistics?   

• Narrative perspective:  how did you create the speaker's voice in your poem?  How did you creative a sense of rapport and connection with your reader in your non-fiction piece? 

• Engagement:  what kinds of conflict or problems did you present or explore to engage your reader?  Did you create an arresting opening (a 'hook'?)?  Which of the source material inspired you?  Go back over the texts you've read in the course of this unit?  Which ones have influence your work in terms of writing to engage?   

• How did you develop thematic concerns?  Consider how you approached ideas of things such as exploitation; conservation; beauty; fragility; climate change; tradition versus modernisation; human nature; indigenous connection to land; ecological disasters;  prejudice and assumptions; power, control, the individual and society etc.   

• Commentary or criticism: Think about what your writing suggests about what it means to be human and try to explain it.  What values are challenged or endorsed in your story?  How is that similar to other texts you have read in this unit?   

• Language : what techniques have you borrowed from the text extracts and poems we have read in class, to achieve a similar effect in your story?  Look at your sentence variety for impact (do you utilise the single sentence paragraph?  Have you used the italicised sentences to show a character’s inner voice? Do you employ figurative language (simile/metaphor/personification) to create a particular effect?  Have you appealed to the five senses in your evocative description?   

*****Your written reflection MUST include EXAMPLES FROM YOUR OWN WORK and references to AT LEAST THREE OTHER TEXTS we have looked at in class.*****