Porter 1 Danielle Porter Professor Suzanne Ingram ENGL 1101-001 15 November 2013

Portfolio Essay
I will start this essay by saying that this is not my first college writing course. It is however, the first portfolio based course I have taken. There are a few major things that I like about a portfolio based writing class. One, you can track your development and growth as a writer from day one until the end of class. Two, your work is graded based upon its progress and not based on other students work. And lastly, you are given an entire semester to continuously revise your pieces so that they could be the best writing possible. Organization of Portfolio When looking at a portfolio, especially an e-portfolio, organization is extremely important. The organization of a portfolio determines how your work is portrayed and can send out a whole slew of information. I organized my portfolio based on what made sense to me. The first page of my e-portfolio is basically just the home page. I decided that I should include this Home page so that there is a buffer between my work. I felt that if there wasnt a buffer like this that it would be too confusing to navigate and a reader might get overwhelmed. Here is where I included a brief introduction about myself. You will notice that the name of my eportfolio is This is my Kingdom Come which is a lyric of one of my favorite songs Demons by Imagine Dragons. I put this as my title because I believe that throughout these past two years as I have transitioned from high school to college, I really came into my own. This is my kingdom come emphases that transformation of both myself and my surroundings. I organized each of the

Porter 2 pages of my e-portfolio by first deciding which order would make the most sense to both the reader and myself. In regards to the major assignments such as the Literacy Narrative, Midterm and Genre Analysis, they are in chronological order. I decided that the Portfolio Essay should be the first tab after my home page because it really gives you as the reader a chance to explore my thought process throughout this year and give me a chance to explain anything that needed to be explained. After the Portfolio Essay is the Literacy Narrative. On this page I decided to gather all artifacts that related to this essay and include it on the page because I believe that it gives the reader a chance to see how I got from point A to point B. On this specific page I included a Process Work Artifact (First Draft), a Writers Notebook Artifact (Sensory Detail Activity), as well as my Final Draft of my Literacy Narrative. I also included a brief description in the caption underneath each piece to explain a little about my process as well as why it is there. The next tab is my Midterm. I decided to revise my Midterm assignment due to the feedback I received by Professor Ingram which asked me to revisit the last question. I decided to accept the challenge and thus put both attempts on my Midterm page with the first on top and the second underneath. The Genre Analysis is the next part of my portfolio. I decided to put together all of the artifacts related to this again because of the way it outlines my writing process. On this page I included a Process Work Artifact (Brainstorm Sheet), two Feedback Artifacts (First Draft of Part One and First Draft of Final Piece), and the Genre Analysis Final Draft. Again I included brief descriptions of each piece underneath. My Wildcard Piece is what comes next. For this part I have both pertaining pieces of work included as well as explanations of why they are there. Lastly in my Portfolio is my Blog. The blogs are organized in descending order based on date. How Did Each Piece Contribute to My Learning and How Has My Writing Grown?

Porter 3 Literacy Narrative The Literacy Narrative contributed immensely to my learning in this course. First off, I had never before written a piece that was a narrative so I was unaware of how to even start my essay. I was so baffled by this that it actually took me several days and brainstorming in class to finally come to a decision about what to write. As I was trying to write this Literacy Narrative, the details just werent there. It was hard for me to try and piece everything together being that I had graduated in 2012 and this specific event took place in 2010. I remember being so lost and confused that my first draft just wasnt at the point that I wanted it to be at. It was so bland and undetailed that at times I questioned if I was even reading a Literacy Narrative at all. That was when we had the class on Sensory Detail. I remembered sitting in my chair and trying to think back three years and recall all of the details that I had left out of my paper. Professor Ingram had instructed us to all sit and just think in silence and to write down anything that you remembered from the squeaky nail on the desk you always sat at to the smell of PB&J from the cafeteria. In that class period alone, I discovered enough details to take my Shitty First Draft to a piece of writing that I could be proud of. I went back to my dorm that day and revised my essay, adding in all of the details that I had missed the first time around and it came alive. Before this experiment with sensory detail, the final paragraph of my piece looked something like this, My essay had put me exactly where I wanted to be. In a room talking to Brooke Ellison, the girl whos story inspired me to honestly tell Amanda that it was going to be okay. It was okay but there are no details, nothing that the reader can imagine, and no details about what happened when I got there. With this class on sensory details, that passage turned into this one,

Porter 4 After all of the students filed out of the auditorium in a loud stampede; Mrs. Matos stood and took the other student and I towards the stairs to the backstage of the auditorium. I thought at that moment, that I could hear my heart beating outside my chest. It was such a surreal moment, my head was rushing with questions. The sensory details were not just found in this area but throughout my entire piece and in my opinion, made the Literacy Narrative so much better for a reader to read. Overall this piece gave me the confidence to dig deeper in my writing and really rack my brain for details. It gave me the ability to revise properly, not just listening to feedback about grammar, but to include entire new phrases, paragraphs even. Personally, I think the Literacy Narrative was where I grew in my writing the most. Midterm Exam My Midterm exam contributed to my overall learning in this class because it helped me reflect on all of my work throughout the semester thus far. It really had me sit down and asked me questions about the course to try and see my comprehension level of the syllabus. The Midterm really had me think about the Central Ideas and Key Concepts. By doing so, I believe it gave me a good idea of how to gauge where I stood in the class alone. Understanding these things is extremely important to my growth and development in this course because if you do not comprehend the syllabus and what the course is trying to develop/build upon, then how do you expect to succeed in this course? Professor Ingram even gave me a chance to revisit my Midterm and further expand upon my ideas in the second draft of my Midterm. I believe that doing this was crucial to my development in this class because I went from not having any questions or inquiries about the course in Midterm I, to having several in Midterm II. An example of this was question number seven. In my

Porter 5 First Attempt of the Midterm, I answered question seven by saying, I really dont have any questions about this course left as well as going on to say that there were certain things about the course that I liked, which did not answer the question. In my Second Attempt of the Midterm, I answered question seven differently by saying, I have a few lingering questions about this course and what you expect of students in the syllabus. So here it goes: 1) How did you determine the course theme? Was it already chosen by the department, or by you personally? 2) Why make a theme comparing high school to college? Why not forget about high school and focus on what tools we will need for college learning? As well as including several other questions, in this response I decided to think deeper about what questions I really had about this course and truth be told, you can always find questions. By being able to revisit my Midterm, I believe that I was able to use the key concept of critical thinking which overall contributed to my overall learning in this course. Genre Analysis In my Genre Analysis, peer review was very important. I had no clue, which way I wanted to take the assignment or even how to write a genre analysis. When I revised my pieces draft to draft, I made sure to review my peers feedback as well as my professors, but still manage to keep my own voice. If you only make revisions based on the feedback you receive, is it still your voice, or are you just regurgitating everything you thought people wanted to hear? One of my best takeaways from this course was how to accept feedback from my peers. When I first entered this course I thought, Are you serious? Peer review? Are my peers really going to know more about my writing than I do? but the further along we went in the course, the better the peer review. My peers werent just looking for spelling

Porter 6 or grammar, they gave me advice on sentences that could be rephrased which would have otherwise been awkward, or ideas about how to conclude my literacy narrative. One of the best peer reviews I had was on my Genre Analysis, which I personally thought was the hardest piece I have ever written. Himani gave me advice about the following sentence, It also may be possible that the author is trying to persuade readers into not using tents for camping, or not going camping at all. She told me that I should include a quote to further prove this to my audience. So in turn, my second draft included this, It also may be possible that the author is trying to persuade readers into not using tents for camping, or not going camping at all. The reader does this by saying that, More than a few campers have had their tents blown down because of the wind, which once again begins the frustrating task of "setting up camp" in the downpour. Including quotes from your source is always a great way to show the reader what you are saying. I believe that the use of peer review in this course greatly impacted my overall learning in this course because it helped me revise my papers with more detail. When you are looking at your own piece of work it is hard to take off the blinders that you have on about certain phrases or even paragraphs, but peer review helped me write better drafts. With that being said, learning to write a genre that I wasnt familiar with helped me expand upon my learning. In addition, with the help of my peers, I was able to take feedback and use it to positively impact my writing and in that aspect too my writing has grown. Blog Even though the blog wasnt a major writing assignment such as an essay it did require a sufficient amount of work, if done properly. For the most part the blog posts were due each

Porter 7 week and were a way of reflecting on the week or weeks that had passed in between. They might have been used to reflect on a major writing piece or on class activity, they might have even been just to see how you were that particular week. My blog helped be develop as a writer in this course by allowing me to think back to the previous week or assignment and reflect on my work. It basically was a decompression of all of the work and progress that you had made in order for you to reset in a way and start fresh the next week. It also really helped looking back on those posts to see if any of my questions were answered throughout the classes or drafts. I really liked Blog Post #5, which was the Rhetorical Analysis of Advertisements. Analyzing these really required me to use a lot of critical thinking skills in order to dig up the deeper message that the advertisement was portraying. For example, upon analyzing Banksys piece we were asked about what we thought of a particular slogan, which was, The Curious Bank. Upon analyzing this advertisement, I answered that question with the following opinion, To me, the slogan means that this particular bank is a bank for the curious minded. It is a bank that will "live and grow" with you. Like a nautilus shell, this bank will be ever changing and ever growing and expanding on itself. I also liked Blog Post #3, which discussed my Literacy Narrative. In this blog I was prompted to write about my overall experience of writing as well as how I felt about my piece. This is an excerpt from my Blog which shows just how confused I was about putting together my Literacy Narrative, Even when I decided upon my topic, I had no idea how to write a literacy narrative. It was just not a genre that I was familiar with and I had no clue how to incorporate detail with dialogue. I just thought it was going to be a giant mess. I believe that the blog was a large part of my growth and development in this course because it let us put our thoughts out there

Porter 8 and with the blog feature, allowed us to receive feedback not only from Professor Ingram, but from our peers as well. I think the blog was one of my favorite parts of the course.

Three Process Work Artifacts The three Process Work Artifacts I have included are the first attempt of my Midterm, my first draft of the Literacy Narrative and the Brainstorm sheet from my Genre Analysis. These three Process Work Artifacts have contributed in different ways to my overall learning in this course. My first attempt at my Midterm is included as a Process Work Artifact because it shows readers that there were different changes made to it in order for it to go from a first draft to a final draft. The revision that I made on it was the revision of my question number seven and it contributed to my learning because I discovered that if I dig deeper and not only look for the easy way out of a question, I might find a suitable answer, it just takes time. The second Process Work Artifact that I included was the First Draft of the Literacy Narrative. This draft was very bland and awkward to read. It just was not where I wanted to be at for my writing. In my first drafts I do what Anne Lamott does and I just write down everything that comes to my head, whether it makes sense or not, and piece it together and call it my Shitty First Draft. I then go through and add details, refining the draft until I have the end result that I desired. The ability to look at my first draft, receive feedback and then revise contributed to my learning by allowing me to not feel pressured to write a perfect first draft. The last Process Work Artifact that I included in my portfolio was my Brainstorming sheet from my Genre Analysis. When I received the Genre Analysis assignment I was completely stumped. I took a different approach then what some of my peers did. I decided that it would

Porter 9 be difficult to analyze one of my own pieces of work and far easier to analyze something that was not my own. So I started to jot down a few ideas of what high school genres came to my mind and finally selected the Five Paragraph Essay as my genre being that I had sufficient experience writing these in high school. In the college genre part, I had to do a little research to figure out what I would be seeing in the future. I found a few ideas and decided upon the Academic Journal as the genre that I would be analyzing in college. My Brainstorming sheet is a great way to look at my writing process at the beginning of my Genre Analysis and contributed to my learning by allowing me to choose genres that I was comfortable writing about. Two Feedback Artifacts The two Feedback Artifacts that I have included in my portfolio are both from my Genre Analysis. This is because the Genre Analysis was the piece that I received the most help with. My first Feedback Artifact is the First Draft of my Genre Analysis (Part One). For this draft, I analyzed a five-paragraph essay as my genre and really needed feedback about how to properly show that the paper was in fact an analysis and not just a summary. Himani, who was a peer in my group, gave me some good feedback on my draft by telling me that I should try to quote more from the actual essay. This example was included above, but to reiterate my point I will include it here. Himani gave me advice about the following sentence, It also may be possible that the author is trying to persuade readers into not using tents for camping, or not going camping at all. She told me that I should include a quote to further prove this to my audience. So in turn, my second draft included this, It also may be possible that the author is trying to persuade readers into not using tents for camping, or not going camping at all. The reader does this by

Porter 10 saying that, More than a few campers have had their tents blown down because of the wind, which once again begins the frustrating task of "setting up camp" in the downpour. As you can see, the feedback that I received from my peer greatly impacted the second draft of my paper and thus contributed to my learning in the course. The second Feedback Artifact is the First Draft of my Genre Analysis (Part Three). For this draft I received feedback from Professor Ingram. Professor Ingram brought up a very good point in her feedback to me. She wrote, As a reader, I want to know more about the WHY. Why five paragraph essays? Why do teachers use them? Are they prep for anything longer?... I found this feedback to be extremely helpful because those are valid questions that a reader would have when reading my paper. After adding in those details, my paper became less of a summary and even more of an analysis. For example, after receiving that feedback I wrote, In most cases, the five- paragraph essay exists only in the world of middle and high school curriculum. There are a few possible reasons why this may be. One of which being that teachers only have so much time in the day to teach about writing. If they stick to a specific structure for the duration of high school, there will be less confusion and possibly better papers. This also has to do with grading. If the essay is well structured, five paragraphs for this example, there is less room for error and it makes grading less difficult. Feedback overall was a very important tool that I used throughout this semester to make my papers the very best that they could be. I believe that through feedback, the quality of my writing increased and that is what I took away from my Feedback Artifacts. Two Writers Notebook Artifacts

Porter 11 The two Writers Notebook Artifacts that I included in my portfolio are the Sensory Detail Activity that we worked on in class and the Readers Response Letter, which can be found in my Wildcard tab. The reason why you can find one of my Writers Notebook Artifacts is due to the feedback on it, which was provided by Professor Ingram, I created my Wildcard. Therefore I decided it would be best to put them together. The Sensory Detail Activity that we worked on in class impacted my overall learning in this course because it allowed me to take my bland first draft and transform it into the detailed second draft. This activity was so important to my development because it showed me that if I just sit back for a few minutes, relax and then write, I could recall details that I never thought I could recall. This was extremely helpful in my Literacy Analysis because details are the glue that metaphorically holds the piece together. The second Writers Notebook Artifact that I included was a Readers Response Letter that I had written after reading I Am Not a Writer, I Am a Good Writer by Joe Quatrone. In this short piece from our textbook, Joe mentions the fact that he always feels like he sounds like a motivational speaker in his writing. I agreed with his point, but in my Readers Response Letter I stated that I had no idea how to fix this. Professor Ingram provided some feedback that I should try and write letters that I wasnt going to send to tone down my voice. I tried this and believed that it actually helped with my writing. Toning down that speaker voice in my writing is something that I attribute to this class, therefore, that piece as well as my Readers Response Letter contributed to my overall learning in the course. Wildcard My Wildcard was inspired by feedback that I received on one of my Readers Response Letters. The actual Readers Response Letter with the written feedback from

Porter 12 Professor Ingram can be found in the same tab as my Wildcard. This is because they directly relate to each other. In my Readers Response Letter, I had written that I felt as though I had a speaker-like voice in my writing and that I did not know how to tone that down. Through feedback, Professor Ingram suggested to me that I should, Practice with a blog or journal, write letters that you dont intend to send, write to your Grandma, that way youre sure to have your authentic Danielle voice. This feedback inspired me to write a letter to my Grandmother who had passed away unfortunately a few weeks ago. In my letter I wrote, Even though I know you are not here to read this letter I know that you are watching over me. You were the best role-model I could have ever asked for and you were always there for me when I needed you most. This quote shows that through writing this letter to my Grandmother, I was able to tone down my voice and have an overall authentic voice in my writing. I believe that this was essential to my learning in this class and that is why I chose this to be my Wildcard. How Were You Engaged With 2 Key Concepts? At the beginning of this course, we were given nine key concepts that we must adapt in order to be successful. They are critical thinking, independent inquiry, responsibility for ones own learning, curiosity, risk-taking, the writing process and revision, providing and receiving feedback, and intellectual growth and development. I personally believe that I connected with each one of these key concepts at least once during this semester. The first key concept I will discuss in detail however, is responsibility for ones own learning. As a senior in high school you are given a choice, you can go to college and further your education, or you could graduate high school and enter the workforce. Personally, I chose to go to college. With that being said, my success in college is completely up to me. Throughout this course we have focused on the

Porter 13 differences between high school and college. Responsibility for ones own learning is one of them. In high school, you can basically glide right through because it is primarily the teachers responsibility to ensure you pass the class. They will extend deadlines, remind you to do your homework, and pretend to look the other way when you have to grab it from a friend because you forgot. That all changes once you hit college. Professors do not care whether an individual student passes or fails, because it is up to that individual to prove that they deserve that grade throughout the year. Having responsibility for my own learning is a major part of being a college student because mommy and daddy cant hold your hand your entire life. Overall, I am in college and I am here to learn, make good grades and eventually move on to bigger and better things. None of that happens if you are not responsible. The second key concept that I will discuss is providing and receiving feedback. When I first entered the course and realized that we needed to provide and receive peer feedback I was a little distraught. Rightfully so, because of the grammar and spelling Nazis that peer review consisted of in high school. In fact, there were times where I would receive my paper back and all I would see was red. This all changed in college. In this course the peer review is there to help you write a better paper, draft by draft. It is done by providing detailed and thoughtful feedback, even including suggestions on what to change about a paper. Throughout this semester, all of us had the opportunity to connect with this key concept through our groups. Personally, I found the feedback that I received to be extremely helpful and insightful and I tried my hardest to give thoughtful feedback to my peers as well. What Grade Do I Deserve? I always hate it when professors ask you what grade that you think you deserve. Its like a double-edged sword. At one end, you dont want to sound full of yourself and say that Yes! I absolutely deserve an A! because anyone could do this and I feel like it is hard to justify when

Porter 14 the entire class thinks that they deserve an A. At the other end, you dont want to downplay all of your work and effort throughout the semester and say Well I think I deserve a B. because if you arent proud of your work and think that you deserve an A, why should the professor? So this is where I tell you that I deserve an A. Not because I just want the A, but because I actually believe that I worked hard enough this semester to earn it. Throughout this essay I have proved my growth and development in this course. I have shown how my writing has grown and how I got to the place that I am at this point. It has been through hard work and effort, constant revisions, and the use of the key concepts of this course. The syllabus has outlined what you need to achieve to get an A. It states that, A 100-90 exemplary: portfolio is complete, thoughtfully arranged and easily navigable; all work is completed to the best of the writers ability; the writer can thoughtfully and thoroughly discuss his/her engagement with *key concepts and can clearly explain and illustrate his/her growth as a writer by quoting and analyzing his/her writing from throughout the course. I know that I have done this throughout this essay and in my portfolio. I have answered each bullet clearly and concisely, providing examples and quotes from my work when necessary. I have also included explanations to clarify why I have added certain pieces of work on my actual portfolio as well. I know that I have worked extremely hard in both the course and on this portfolio. Based on what I have presented to you in this essay and on Weebly, I hope that you will give me an A.