Your Portfolio will consist of several pieces of writing, most of which you will have chosen yourself. You also will decide on the order in which each piece will appear. The two common denominators for everyone’s portfolio will be the 6-8 page Research Paper and the one-page Cover Letter, in which you will offer the rationale for the order of your portfolio materials. You also will describe how the drafting, composition, and revision of these pieces has helped you grow as a writer. Granted, three-and-a-half months is not a long time, but in this time you have become a different writer than you were when you walked into the classroom on the first day.
The Portfolio will consist of:
1. The Cover Letter (from you to me)
2. The 6-8 page Research Paper
3. Revisions of any of the following works:
* The Annotated Bibliography
* One or more your formal papers (you may include an original version and a truly revised version)
* A blog post (revised and expanded, if you wish)
* Any of the Response Papers
*Portions of your journal (or, your journal as a supplement, if you so not wish to “tear” pages out of it)
The grand total should equal about 15 pages
Additional Information:
Your Portfolio is to be arranged in a manner that you decide upon:
The two components that each writer will have are: the Research Paper and the Cover Letter. Clearly, because the cover letter is the cover letter, it must be the first item in your portfolio. The arrangement of all subsequent materials in your portfolio is your choice—and there is no right and wrong as to how your portfolio ought to be arranged. The key is that you have a rationale for how you choose to order your materials and that you have clearly articulated this rationale in your cover letter (for example, if you choose to place your Research Paper near, or at, the end of the Portfolio, what was your rationale for doing so? Do you see your Research Paper as the culmination of your work in this class? Or, is this the work that presented you with the greatest difficulty and you therefore want it to be positioned as the “crowning achievement” of your project (thus at the end—or did it present you with other issues that made you want to “place it at the end?” Or “at the beginning?”
You do not need a Table of Contents for your portfolio because your Cover Letter will alert the audience regarding the materials included, and the order in which they are included. However, if you would like to write a Table of Contents, I will not stop you 🙂
The “holder” for your project: You are not limited to a traditional, plastic (small) 3-ring binder, or a 3-hole cardboard folder. Depending on how your see your project, you might want to include the materials in a clean, interoffice envelope, as if this report were traveling from one department, or one branch, to another. You might feel that something approximating a “go-see portfolio” is appropriate for your project’s theme. Please don’t feel that you must get creative in presentation. However, if you are inclined to do so, please feel free to express your creativity.
Grading for the Portfolio:
Your Portfolio represents the culmination of your semester’s work. More precisely, it shows your growth as a writer during the course of this semester. Thus, the Portfolio — made up of the materials noted above, in an order you decide upon and rationalize in your letter — is the sum total of your semester’s work. In essence and in practice, then, it has been nurtured by your shorter papers and bibliographies, both in-class and out-of-class writing, blogs and comments on blogs, class participation that has nourished, prompted, and stirred this growth & so forth. I do not assign “points per part,” I do not labor over a calculator, I do not grade on a curve — I certainly do not have x-number of As, Bs, Cs, and so forth that I decide in advance will be the allotted total. Rather, if 10 people earn an A, ten people will have As submitted to the register’s office. Thus, please consult the rubric you received at the start of the semester for a solid guideline as to how I shall assess the Portfolio you submit. This rubric is detailed and will also serve as a helpful guideline when reviewing and revising your work, especially your research paper–the most substantive piece of writing in your Portfolio.
If at any time between now and the end of the semester (most logically, when we meet for our one-on-one, which many of you feel will be most beneficial for you as you are further into your Research Paper), you would like to get an idea of what you might earn at this stage, I am happy to go over your materials, with the rubric in from of us, and discuss this with you — as well as discuss strategies for trying to meet a goal you have in mind (please note that a desired goal, does not automatically mean meeting that goal). Indeed, since, you will be submitting some materials already graded, you would, in essence be graded twice for a piece that you revise and resubmit as part of your portfolio, whether that piece is your first essay, a revise blog post, or a revised piece of in-class writing. Further, since your participation in class has helped you pose questions, and share ideas — about readings, video clips, in-class workshops, etc. — that have contributed to your growth as a writer, your participation is an intimate part of the Portfolio. Indeed, the Portfilio is the culmination of a journey — your manuscript, if you will — as you progress to the next stage of your writerly selves.