Marguerite

Rehders Ms. Caruso Engl. 1102 20 April, 2012 Final Reflection Over the course of this semester, I definitely believe I improved as a writer

and as a student. The first half of the semester, I did struggle slightly with following all directions for some of our assignments because I never asked questions. I was constantly unsure of myself when completing writing assignments, and always tended to second-guess myself. However, after writing my midterm reflection letter and discussing what I could do to fix this problem at our conference, I learned that it is ok to ask as many questions as possible if you are ever unsure of instructions. After following through with this and asking more questions, the overall quality of my work improved and my confidence did as well. My portfolio definitely shows off my best work from this semester. As the

semester went on, my portfolio has grown stronger. An example would be the differences in my peer review efforts. With my first peer review session, I barely got any feedback from my partner, therefore I did not try as hard when editing his paper. However, as time went on I learned that peer review actually is useful and I made better use out of it. I gave the best feedback I could on my partners papers and I really took what they said about my paper into consideration when editing it.

At the beginning of this class, I expected it to be either extremely easy or

extremely difficult. When we first went over the historical inquiry project, it sounded like a breeze to me. I did not take into consideration all of the revisions and little steps we would have to take in order to move forward in this class. If it were not for the in-class activities we did to prepare us for those weeks assignments, I would not have succeeded in this class. Every class, we had a lesson planned out for that day that pertained to that nights homework. This was extremely helpful for me because I was often confused and got to practice what I was confused on. All in all I believe did very well in this course. I believe that I stepped up my

effort big time in the second half of the semester. I made sure I did not miss one class and that I was never late, I asked questions and I completed all of my work thoroughly. Ultimately the midterm conference is what helped me improve my performance in this class because I was able to identify which aspects of my work ethic were hurting rather than helping me.