Final Portfolio

The final portfolio is a collection of your writing across the semester.  Your portfolio should include 20 pages of polished (heavily and significantly revised) prose, including, but not limited to:

• A table of contents (does NOT count toward your 20 pages)
• A self-evaluation letter (which can count toward your 20 pages)
• Final versions of your four (4) major papers (community service, family story, evaluation, and proposal papers). These papers are revised and clean, no teacher/student comments.
• Other items you may choose to include are revised journal entries
• Two (2) Revised papers demonstrating the revision process (which do NOT count toward your 20 pages).

The SELF-EVALUATION LETTER is a letter to me, from you, describing yourself as a writer and as a student across the semester. You should evaluate your improvement, effort, attitude, attendance, participation, group work efforts, reading/writing efforts, writing workshop efforts, etc. Basically make a case for yourself -- but of course be honest -- I know what you have and have not done in class. This assignment should not be a place for evaluating the course, but please feel free to comment on what activities/assignments helped you and which may not have been as helpful. This can be considered a part of your 20 pages of polished prose -- so make sure there are no errors and you have taken the time to revise.

In the two (2) REVISED PAPERS it is your job to show your revision process. You may use colored pencils, pens, sticky notes, colored fonts, etc. to show commentary as to WHY you made certain editing/revising moves with your paper.  It is not enough to say “I moved this sentence from here to there”; you should say “I moved this sentence from the middle of the paragraph to the beginning of the paragraph to create a better transition from idea X to idea Y.”  This is clearly the toughest part of the portfolio -- to show that you are thinking critically about your own revision strategies. You must also include the photocopies of sources for your research paper (only the pages from which you actually quote, summarize, or paraphrase as well as the pages with bibliographic information). Include your Works Cited page.

Oral Presentation -- approx. 8-10 minutes

You will choose your favorite piece of writing that you have done this semester (from our class) and you will read it to the class.  Please explain to the class why it is your favorite piece, what its strong points are and what needs further improvement (if you had the time to continue working on it).  You will also explain what steps you took to revise this piece of writing to make it as good as it is now. 

If this portfolio is incomplete (missing components), it will not receive a passing grade.  Failure to turn in a portfolio on time also results in failure of the portfolio.  The portfolio is assessed for its adherence to the requirements of the assignment, including, but not limited to, what is in it, the quality of what is in it, and knowledge and demonstration of significant revision strategies.