Writing a Reflective Self-Assessment for Your Portfolio

Everyone is charged with writing a reflective self-assessment as part of the portfolio, number 15, the asterisked item, which reads:

A paper that identifies your best piece of writing from this term, explaining why you think it is your best.

Since there are always questions about how to go about doing this here are some suggestions to help you get started. First, obviously you have to select the piece that you believe to be the best representation of what you can do as a writer. Now, there are innumerable reasons why anyone might select a particular piece. The key is exploring and explaining those reasons. To do that, you need to begin asking yourself a lot of questions, then crafting the answers into an organized paper. The simplest question to begin is derived by turning the prompt into a one, why do you think the selection your best?

Other questions you might consider:

1. What are the strongest aspects of your writing skill in the piece?
2. How did you go about writing the piece? What was your process?
3. How has this piece evolved or improved in your revision(s) and over the course of the term?
4. What kinds of problems did you encounter? How did you solve them?
5. What are the weakest aspects of your writing skill that you had to address in the piece?
6. How did you address and improve your weaknesses in the piece?
7. How does your piece demonstrate your personal improvement as a writer over the course of the term?
8. What goals did you set for yourself in writing or revising, if any? How did you attempt to accomplish them?

Of course, you do not need to answer all of these questions, but they are offered as a guide to get you started. If you come up with some on your own, that’s great too. Regardless, answering questions like these will help you reflect on both your experience and work, enabling you to write a quality self-assessment.

Also, consider using quotes from your piece that are relevant and specific to the idea that you are explaining in the reflection. Remember, your main purpose is to explain why the piece is your best, using evidence from the piece with support is a good way to accomplish the task.

Lastly, this piece is about your work and you as a writer. So you will need to use first person to do this. It is a personal reflection, after all. Keep it personal.

Notes on Night Essay Drafts

In reviewing the essays about Night, there were a number of common errors that were widely distributed across almost everyone’s work. While I did make a short list on the board of things to consider while composing in class, a number of things mentioned persisted. Here is a list of things that should be considered when revising. The first three are the same three items that have been at issue since the beginning of the year. So you need to address them and make them automatic at this point when writing academic essays.

Use Present Tense – For some reason, despite being reminded, nearly everyone wrote in the past tense. Remember, we are approaching the memoir as a piece of literature not a historical document. Thus, the convention is to write about it in the present tense.

Avoid Contractions – There are still a significant number of you that are using contractions and informal language in your work. Stop doing this. Considering that this was an in-class draft, it is less problematic Yet again, it should be automatic at this point.

Use Third Person – A fair number of people continue to use first and second person in their essays, which is bad form and informal. Make sure you remain in third person, avoiding things like “you,” “I,” and “we.” State your analysis as though it were fact. Instead of “In my opinion, the worst form of dehumanization is…” just start the sentence after “opinion,” cutting the opening phrase.

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Paragraphs About Ideas – Paragraphs are not about evidence or quotes, they are about ideas. Also, the ideas need to be explained a little before the evidence is introduced in the paragraph. In establishing the idea of the paragraph, make it clear why it is important and supports your thesis. Make a claim and then explain and support it with evidence, as well as commentary and analysis.

Explaining Evidence – Make sure that the evidence supports the main idea of the paragraph. Try to use evidence and quotes higher in a paragraph, avoiding dropping the quote in at the end. Introducing the evidence earlier helps trigger more explanation. Remember, a quote’s meaning does not need to be explained as much as it needs to be connected to the idea, which requires more analysis and explanation than many are inclined to include. Push to get to deeper levels of analysis.

Along the lines of finding ways to increase the depth and detail of the commentary and analysis, here is a sample paragraph with some notes that highlight part of the process of development.

A main reason why the townspeople of Sighet remained complacent about the coming war concerned their geographic location.¹ The town of Sighet is a small town in the region of Transylvania, far from the war front, at this time, near the border between Hungary and the Soviet Union.² It is closer to Soviet territory than it is to the Hungarian capital, Budapest by hundreds of miles.³ The general feeling is “The Germans will not come this far. The will stay in Budapest. For strategic reasons, for political reasons…” (9).⁴ This location provides two main reasons for lack of action and concern. Being so far away from the political capital of the country insulates Sighet to a degree from the political turmoil that occurs there.⁵ When the Hungarian head of state is “forced to ask a leader of the pro-Nazi Nyilas Party to form a new government,” no one worries (9).⁶ The government changes almost overnight, the concern remains conservative and warrants no alarm.⁷ Additionally, as the Soviets increase their involvement in the war, those in Sighet are convinced that the Red Army will arrive long before the chance of a German advance as a matter of strategically securing the border area. Since the town is not significant for any reason, making the townspeople believe that they are safe from being swept up in the war.⁸

Paragraph Notes:

1. Sets up one supportive claim regarding what would be a thesis, making geographical position a factor
2. Uses a factual piece of evidence to establish the geographical location in context
3. Adds more contextual information to support the claim that requires some deduction
4. A piece of evidence, in the form of a quote, to further explain the influence of geography
5. Establishes two main reasons, from the quote, that link the claim and commentary and analysis
6. An additional piece of evidence, a quote, that supports the political reasons that support the claim
7. Analysis that supports the political reasons
8. Explanation about the strategic reasons that support the claim

English Porfolio Requirements & Details

Here are the choices:

1. Preparatory paper on “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
2. Passage paper on summer reading title
3. Response to New York Times article “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits”
4. Essay on excerpt from Old Man and the Sea
5. Response to New York Times article “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price”
6. Essay on excerpt from The Scarlet Letter
7. Response to Chronicle of Higher Education article “What are Books Good For?”
8. Essay on suspense in the short story “The Most Dangerous Game”
9. Response to New York Times article “The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets”
10. Response to Boston Globe article “The Bullied Brain”
11. Open response essay based on prompts for Night
12. Response to Best of Educational Leadership 2009–2010 article “The Case for Slow Reading”
13. An imaginary dialogue between yourself and a literary character from one of the readings this term
14. Reflective paper honestly appraising both your strengths and weaknesses as a writer
15. A paper that identifies your best piece of writing from this term, explaining why you think it is your best *

Choose four assignments from the list above (should include at least one article response and two academic, analytic pieces about class texts or excerpts). Everyone must complete the final asterisked selection. This makes a total of five pieces for the portfolio. To earn a passing grade, you must complete all five pieces. The completed portfolio will be treated as 40% of your term grade. This is your opportunity to revise and improve work that you have previously submitted or try something new you believe will best showcase your skills. Strive for craft and elegance in your writing and you can earn a quality grade. Pieces should be 600+ words, unless it is obviously not applicable to the chosen piece.

Other instructions:

You will need to assemble your work in a binder that includes all of your drafts for each piece. The binder should have the following:

1. a cover
2. a table of contents
3. an order that has the final draft placed first, followed by all prior drafts, for each piece
4. selection #15 placed first in the order

You will also need to email me the five final drafts of your work in a single document. Please name the file using the following convention – smith_port01. Also, make sure that you use this convention for the subject line of your email – Jim Shue – Period 4 Portfolio.