ReflectivePortfolioExample

=Reflective Portfolio Example= Matthew Hartman

Examples of Contents
Following are examples of what you can include in your portfolio. Portfolio number one includes examples from high school writing and writing from other courses. Portfolio number two focuses mainly on the major papers from English 103 but also includes process writing. You could also include early drafts of papers, freewriting, or other writing from the course, such as your blog posts.

You can include the writing as attached documents, or you can put the writing on wiki pages and link to them from the table of contents.

Portfolio #1
Cover Letter

1. High School Paper

2. English 103 Papers
 * Memoir
 * Public Letter
 * Analysis
 * Multi-genre

3. Other College Papers
 * Comm 210 Speaker Critique
 * Comm 210 Video Analysis

Portfolio #2
Cover Letter

1. Memoir: "A Long Way Home"

2. Public Letter: "Dear Legislature"

3. Academic Argument: "Goals Minus Motivation Equals Laziness"

4. Multi-genre: "Fall"

5. Process Writings

Example of Annotated Table of Contents
Cover Letter

1. Memoir: "A Long Way Home"

the memoir was one of my favorite pieces to write. It was a lot of fun to write because it was simply telling a story from my past. I chose one that I found funny and entertaining and tried to share it with readers. The story took place eighth grade year when my friends and I were bored after a Friday night dance. We decided to amuse ourselves by going teepeeing. I liked having to search for small details to incorporate into the story. I chose this piece for my portfolio because it exemplified an assignment that I enjoyed writing and one it was pretty easy to write. Although this was my first paper and received the highest grade, I didn't think my writing performance requests throughout the term.

2. Public Letter: "Dear Legislature"

Going from the memoir to the persuasive letter was a major change for me. It went from a piece of writing that I really enjoyed to one I dreaded writing even in high school. I chose this piece because I found it to be my weakest paper. Although I received the same grade on it as I did for the next paper, I thought this assignment was at a tough one for me. I wanted this portfolio to reflect my weaknesses and strengths, and this assignment definitely exemplified the weakness of my writing. I wrote about how there should be age limits on driving. The topic was good, and I did well explaining my thoughts and ideas, but I did a poor job supporting my ideas with statistics. The paper showed a lack of organization and also there was a lot of repetition.

3. Academic Argument: "Goals Minus Motivation Equals Laziness"

When writing this paper, I thought that I connected with the piece I was analyzing extremely well. I liked "Who Speaks for the Lazy?," not only because it was an easy read, but because it was really relatable. I enjoyed reading about the author's life experiences and how he related them to ideas about laziness. I agreed with a lot of what Krystal said in his essay, but I didn't think he supported his ideas very strongly. This should have been an easy assignment,but I had a hard time organizing and developing my thoughts. I wanted this to be in my final portfolio because this was the next assignment, and because this was an assignment I knew I could have done better on.

4. Multi-genre: "Fall"

Along with the memoir, this was another assignment that I had a lot of fun writing. It allows you to choose any subject and described it using multiple genres. The hardest part of this essay was choosing a topic. After I discovered it,the writing went well. I didn't choose a very original topic, but it was one I thought I could write pages on and describe in so many ways. It was just a season, but there were so many aspects of it that I really enjoyed. I chose this assignment to add to my portfolio because it was my last assignment, and like the first, I believe that I did well on this paper. It highlights my strengths in writing.

5. Process Writings

Process writing was something completely new for me. I've never done anything like this in my previous English classes. In the beginning I was a little skeptical about this type of writing. I thought it was a waste of time because I had just finished writing a paper, and I wasn't thrilled about writing anything afterwards. After getting them back and reading them over, I realized that they were helpful because they show my progress with procrastination and the focus needed to write these papers. I added the process writing for each of the papers in this portfolio so I could compare the process I used to write the paper with the end result.