What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is a collection of work over a period of time. For us, this will be a collection of your writing over the course of this semester. Your portfolio is a way to showcase all the work you’ve done for this class. It is also a place to reflect on your learning and growth as a writer, and editor, and a reader.

Requirements

Your portfolio must include the following pieces:

• The portfolio reflection essay (new essay-see details below)
• Three pieces of previously written assignments. Choose…
  • Two process writing assignments
    • You choose which of the essays (essay 1, 2, and/or 3) you include
  • One timed/in-class essay
    • You choose ONE from the letter to your instructor and the two short writes.

(Include 3 of your old writing assignments)

Process

1. First, look through your work to decide…
   • what to include in the portfolio
     • look for writings that showcase your strengths and hard work as well as your struggles and lessons learned, even if not yet reflected in the grade.
     • Revise/edit graded essays before adding them to the portfolio. Include the newest versions and the graded versions/drafts of the work to show your progression/improvement.
       • Look at your writing:
         • ?Is there a common errors across different writing assignments??
           • Main idea statements; ?development/details/support?; organization
           • ?Language: ?word choice/vocabulary/collocations?verbs?structure – sentence?
       • LOOK FOR PATTERNS
   • how & where to discuss your writings in your reflection essay, which will be the first piece in your portfolio.
2. Develop your reflection essay (see details below)
3. Create the portfolio. Put the work together as a whole. See Presentation of Portfolio below for how to do this.

Reflection Essay

To bring this semester to a close, you will reflect on your experiences, assess your growth as a writer and reader, evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, connect these things to your needs for future success, and evaluate your learning in the class. You can focus on specific moments, lessons, papers, portions of papers, etc.

Reminder: Follow essay rules

• Main idea statements (thesis, topic sentence, restatement of thesis)
• Organize your body paragraph around one key idea (stated in topic sentence)
• No Works Cited doc
• Instead, include your 3 pieces of writing that you cite or discuss in your reflection essay.

Sample Reflection essay organization

It is probably easiest to organize around strengths and weaknesses. Within each paragraph, you can make references to several pieces of your writing. The order below isn’t mandatory.

• Introduction & thesis
  • A thesis for a reflection essay will tell the reader a big picture idea about your time/learning in this course.
• Body 1: Topic sentence -Focus on writing strengths
  • Give specific strengths and use your writing as evidence. You can quote your own writing. I recommend two to three strengths, each with a reference to your own writing. Each strength can be a subtopic/help you organize the paragraph.
• Body 2: Topic sentence -Focus on writing weaknesses
  • Give specific weaknesses and use your writing as evidence. You can quote your own writing. I recommend two to three weaknesses, each with a reference to your own writing. Each weakness can be a subtopic/help you organize the paragraph.
• Body 3: Topic sentence -Focus on your overall learning and growth over the semester
  • Discuss specific ideas here: what you’ve learned, how you’ve grown over the semester as a writer, reader, learner.
  • Cite your own writing or various activities during the semester
• Conclusion: restate your thesis, summarize your key point, leave us with a comment

Citing your own writing

First, you will only use in-text citations for this essay.

Since you will be citing multiple works by the same author (you), you should use the title of the work in your in-text citation (see Section 56a #10 in Rules for Writers) Therefore, make sure that the writing assignments included in the portfolio each have a title. You can use the title of the writing to cite your writing in the essay. For example, if I want to cite my first Short Write, it would first be nice to have a title other than Short Write 1. Maybe the title is “The Irrelevance of Time” or “Stevenson’s Strong Argument.”

Next, in your reflection essay, you will use in-text citation (title) and quotations to add evidence to your discussions.

EXAMPLE in-text citation sentence: In my short write “The Irrelevance of Time,” I skdjfkjskdjflksdjfklajakld.

NO WORKS CITED needed for this essay!

Other Notes

When you write your reflection essay, remember these key points:

• Cite evidence from your writings. In other words, quote yourself.
• Reflection essay word count requirement: 600 +
• Consider the rhetorical situation as you develop your essay. Remember the key elements we’ve talked about and assess them for this assignment:
  1. Text/topic
  2. Author
  3. Audience
  4. Purpose
  5. Setting/Context

CLASS NOTES 12/1

Presentation of Portfolio

Order of Presentation

1. The Portfolio Reflection essay should be the first component of the portfolio.
2. After the reflection essay, you can decide how you organize/group/order your different writing assignments.

Method of Presentation

You can choose how you present your portfolio to your instructor. Choose one option below:

Option 1: You can submit all written components as ONE document to the ESL 110 Portfolio assignment in Canvas.

• This requires that you put all of your older work into one document for upload to Canvas.
  • First doc = reflection essay
  • second doc = recently revised work (like essay 1)
  • third doc = graded version of that same work (essay 1 at grading time)
  • fourth doc = recently revised work (like essay 2)
  • fifth doc = graded version of that same work (essay 2 at grading time)
  • sixth doc = recently revised short work (like Short Write 2)
  • seventh doc = graded version of short work (Short Write 2 at grading time)

Option 2: Create a google site to host your work

• How to create a google site video tutorial (8:47) (Links to an external site.)
• Use your google account to create a free website.
• This is a difficult option, so it will get you up to 10 bonus points for the work.
• You will decide the design of your website and how to showcase your work.

Option 3:

Create a website that hosts your work.

• WIX (Links to an external site.) allows you to create a free website and provides templates to make it easy.
• This is a difficult option, so it will get you up to 10 bonus points for the work.
• You will decide the design of your website and how to showcase your work.

Deadline

The deadline for the complete portfolio is our last day of class.

Grading

The grade for the portfolio will be based on 2 things:

1. The reflection essay 50%
2. Revision of older work 50%

View the Portfolio Grading Rubric.

eBook Help

For a brief overview of portfolios, view Chpt. 2j