portfolios ENGL513 Composition Theory & Pedagogy
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LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com Attend Zoom Class by clicking on this link. |
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OVERVIEW
Portfolios work in different ways in different classes. Sometimes they are used to simply collect the work that a student has done over a period of time. Sometimes they are used to mark progress via revision. And sometimes they are used as a way to assess student work—not simply his writing work but his effort and progress in class.
The portfolios you will turn in will do a little bit of all three of those things. This is a chance for you to collect/reflect on your work, to think about what you’ve done well and what you still need to learn. I’ll ask you to write about this in a reflection letter that you include with the portfolios. Another way you will showcase your progress is through revision. You will revise some of your work from this summer. You’ll write about this in your reflection letter as well.
Scholarship tells us that portfolio assessment is a truer assessment of student effort and progress for several reasons. First and most obvious: it requires students engage in further thinking about their writing through revision as well as reflection. Portfolios ask students to think about where the writing is, where it is working or not working, and what they can do as writers to move it to a new place. That meta-awareness of writing and process is a big threshold concept in a writer's experience. There are few ways to move students to that threshold except for through the portfolio. Connected to this, reflection is a major component of the portfolio, and, again, that work brings awareness of a writer's own particular process.
From a teacher's perspective, assessment gives you the opportunity to take stock of what students say they are learning, and, if you ask them, what they think is working for them in the class. This can make it possible for you to course correct mid-semester even, but it can also help you to think about a next class, a next year. I have found this part of portfolio assessment incredibly important to my own teaching.
I also know that teachers shy away from portfolio assessment because it sounds like a lot of work, but I would argue that there are ways to work it (spec and contract grades) that actually lighten the work load--to increase student writing and decrease teacher commenting, and, thus workload.
Finally, I will use the portfolios as a way of assessing your effort, progress as a writer and as a student, and the quality of your written work. I will assess the portfolios and include a lengthy letter to you when I return them. That letter will detail your entire career in this class up to that point. It will give you feedback on the quality of the portfolio itself, and I will give you a letter grade that marks your progress in a way that is valued by the college. The letter will include individual grades based on the contracts for the various assignments as well as an overall grade for the portfolio and this first half of the semester.
DETAILS
At midterm, you will send me an email. That email will include, either embedded in the email or as a link to a google doc, the following materials that make up your your portfolio:
1. About 200-350 words (typed) reflecting on the most significant reading you feel you've done so far this semester. Include the dates from the class discussion board posts/author names of the reading response(s) that you discuss in your reflection. You can write this directly into your midterm portfolio email.
2. Your final version of your Literacy History This may include a revision or it may not, but it must include a 200-350 word reflection explaining how your final version ended up the way it did--comments from me, comments from your readers, ideas you've had since you first wrote the piece, etc. You can write about why you elected not to change anything as well. The easiest way to include this in a portfolio is to put your reflection into the original document--the one with your original revised work and my comments--in your midterm portfolio email..
3. Your completed Reverse Annotated Bibliography and Reflection.
4. A midterm reflection letter, around 500 words. You can either embed a link to a google doc or you can write that directly into the email (word to the wise, though, I'd compose is something that is less likely to crash when you least expect it so you don't lose anything). In that letter, you will write a midpoint reflection on what you've learned so far about Composition Theory & Pedagogy and how it makes you think about what should be happening in the literacy classroom--your own as a teacher, as a student, as a future teacher, as someone who loved school and English, someone who hated it. Whatever your position is or the multiple positions you take up, that's how you are relating to the question.
WHAT TO DO FOR OUR FINAL EXAM PERIOD/FINAL PORTFOLIO
I am emailing this information to you, posting it to the portfolio page of our website, and posting it to the syllabus page.
Portfolios work in different ways in different classes. Sometimes they are used to simply collect the work that a student has done over a period of time. Sometimes they are used to mark progress via revision. And sometimes they are used as a way to assess student work—not simply his writing work but his effort and progress in class.
The portfolios you will turn in will do a little bit of all three of those things. This is a chance for you to collect/reflect on your work, to think about what you’ve done well and what you still need to learn. I’ll ask you to write about this in a reflection letter that you include with the portfolios. Another way you will showcase your progress is through revision. You will revise some of your work from this summer. You’ll write about this in your reflection letter as well.
Scholarship tells us that portfolio assessment is a truer assessment of student effort and progress for several reasons. First and most obvious: it requires students engage in further thinking about their writing through revision as well as reflection. Portfolios ask students to think about where the writing is, where it is working or not working, and what they can do as writers to move it to a new place. That meta-awareness of writing and process is a big threshold concept in a writer's experience. There are few ways to move students to that threshold except for through the portfolio. Connected to this, reflection is a major component of the portfolio, and, again, that work brings awareness of a writer's own particular process.
From a teacher's perspective, assessment gives you the opportunity to take stock of what students say they are learning, and, if you ask them, what they think is working for them in the class. This can make it possible for you to course correct mid-semester even, but it can also help you to think about a next class, a next year. I have found this part of portfolio assessment incredibly important to my own teaching.
I also know that teachers shy away from portfolio assessment because it sounds like a lot of work, but I would argue that there are ways to work it (spec and contract grades) that actually lighten the work load--to increase student writing and decrease teacher commenting, and, thus workload.
Finally, I will use the portfolios as a way of assessing your effort, progress as a writer and as a student, and the quality of your written work. I will assess the portfolios and include a lengthy letter to you when I return them. That letter will detail your entire career in this class up to that point. It will give you feedback on the quality of the portfolio itself, and I will give you a letter grade that marks your progress in a way that is valued by the college. The letter will include individual grades based on the contracts for the various assignments as well as an overall grade for the portfolio and this first half of the semester.
DETAILS
At midterm, you will send me an email. That email will include, either embedded in the email or as a link to a google doc, the following materials that make up your your portfolio:
1. About 200-350 words (typed) reflecting on the most significant reading you feel you've done so far this semester. Include the dates from the class discussion board posts/author names of the reading response(s) that you discuss in your reflection. You can write this directly into your midterm portfolio email.
2. Your final version of your Literacy History This may include a revision or it may not, but it must include a 200-350 word reflection explaining how your final version ended up the way it did--comments from me, comments from your readers, ideas you've had since you first wrote the piece, etc. You can write about why you elected not to change anything as well. The easiest way to include this in a portfolio is to put your reflection into the original document--the one with your original revised work and my comments--in your midterm portfolio email..
3. Your completed Reverse Annotated Bibliography and Reflection.
4. A midterm reflection letter, around 500 words. You can either embed a link to a google doc or you can write that directly into the email (word to the wise, though, I'd compose is something that is less likely to crash when you least expect it so you don't lose anything). In that letter, you will write a midpoint reflection on what you've learned so far about Composition Theory & Pedagogy and how it makes you think about what should be happening in the literacy classroom--your own as a teacher, as a student, as a future teacher, as someone who loved school and English, someone who hated it. Whatever your position is or the multiple positions you take up, that's how you are relating to the question.
WHAT TO DO FOR OUR FINAL EXAM PERIOD/FINAL PORTFOLIO
I am emailing this information to you, posting it to the portfolio page of our website, and posting it to the syllabus page.
- Posted to our Class Discussion Board: A 300 word (or so) reflection on the reading this semester. All of the reading is fair game and you do not need to re-turn in any of the actual reading responses. I am interested in hearing what reading most affected you over the course of the semester. You can cover as much or as little of the reading as you choose.
- A link to your completed, final project/paper. Include a reflection, 300 words (or so), directly in the document, discussing how the workshop and the feedback from your colleagues affected the final product. Please write a bit about what you are pleased with in this final piece and write about what you might have done with more time/more whatever you needed more of. Because I have everyone’s workshop draft, there’s no need to include it with the final paper.
- Posted to our Class Discussion Board: A final portfolio cover letter. In about 500 words, consider what you thought about the field at the midterm and what your experiences since—as teacher and scholar—have made you think. Have your revised your idea of what the field is about? Perhaps not? In what ways has the experience this course affected you as a writer/reader/ teacher?