Martin 1 Megan Martin 800805418 Suzanne Ingram 30 April 2014 Portfolio Essay English classes are something that

we all have to endure in our school careers. Throughout elementary, middle, high school and even college, every student has to write numerous papers, essays, and pages upon pages of book reports, letters, peer review papers, honestly the list could go on forever. Some people take to English very well and enjoy writing and learning about literature, others however skate by hoping to just finish the class. Well, I am very glad to say that this is my last English class ever, and in this class I have surprisingly learned so much more about myself as a writer than I ever have before. Throughout this portfolio process, I was given the chance to look back over my writing over the semester, and Ill be vague, most of it wasnt pretty. Thankfully, the beauty of the ePortfolio project is to subject us to the opportunity to revise and clean up some of our writing. I made many changes to my papers, and Im very glad I did. I felt like most of my writing was sloppily put together at the last minute, and that is very evident when looking through my drafts in my portfolio. There are so many things that have changed, so Im just going to jump right in!

Weebly Website
First things first, some of the very first things we started working on in English 1102 this semester was our Weebly sites. Just the website alone shows dramatic improvement. When we started the Weeblys in class earlier this semester, I picked a random layout and that was that. I

Martin 2 had no pictures, I had nothing written about who I am as a writer, and I had no sense of organization. The blog was very bland to say the least. One day, while finishing up my blog post I thought to myself, If I was a reader, would I be even the slightest bit interested in the work displayed on this page? In fact, during my midterm I reviewed portfolio #6 on the Moodle page and wrote this comment in my midterm: Honestly, seeing this authors e-portfolio makes me realize that mine isnt at the full potential that it could be. I have always been a very creative person, and I could show that through my blog, so the authors blog gives me motivation to make mine just as great. I want it to show who I am, and I want the audience to see that. Thats when I decided to brighten it up. I changed the layout to a white, clean background and then I chose to put bright pictures that popped out to the audience. The pictures that I included are pictures of children. Kids of all genders, races, and nationalities are showcased at the top of each page. I chose to do this because much of my e-Portfolio centers around my love for children. My exploratory essay, multi genre project, and annotated bibliography all focus on kids and how much of an impact they make. I also went through and added several pages, just so the reader wouldnt get confused. Now, my Weebly is easily navigable and I have to say, Im quite proud of it and would greatly consider using this form of presentation for another class in the future.

Blog Posts
The blog posts portion of my site have also transformed for the better. It is easily noticed that under the blog tab of my Weebly website, my blogs are short and some questions are left unanswered. Professor Ingram gave me constructive criticism to lengthen my blog posts. She made helpful comments like, Megan, You've got a good start here, but surely you have a lot more to say. Can you practice asking questions and being curious about the syllabus? The point

Martin 3 of this was to think about what inquiry might mean and to practice asking meaningful questions about things. Also, the 300-500 word count was purposeful, too: I'd like you to use this blog to get your mind working. Thinking-->writing--thinking--more writing. (: Let's add to this post. And another that said, Lets work on expanding our blog posts, Megan. They will only be helpful to you if you use them. Again, a great start here, but 300 words? Immediately after reading these comments I went straight to Weebly and updated my blog posts with more information as asked.

Exploratory Essay
The next thing I would like to discuss about my portfolio is my exploratory essay. Ill admit that the first draft of this essay was carelessly put together. I received comments from classmates and Professor Ingram saying to expand and talk more about how I first realized my passion is children. Professor Ingram left a comment saying As a reader, I was most interested in your first paragraph-can you say more about babysitting? What that was like? What else can you tell us about the roots of your passion? Maybe say more about your wishes to become a mother. And can your second paragraph be split into two so that you can go more in-depth with each goal? How could a Make-A-Wish experience help enhance your essay? This was all great feedback that was very much needed in my case. Sometimes I do the bare minimum of my work unfortunately because of so many classes and things to do, I hate the fact that sometimes I choose quantity over quality. Ive learned from this class that its not the amount of work that matters, its the fact that you have covered everything that is supposed to be included. Every topic and very question should be addressed. I was also asked to change the title to make my essay better. So, in that regard, my title changed from Exploratory Essay to My Passion, My

Martin 4 Future. This to me makes the reader more interested in what I have to say, rather than looking at a bland title that is probably very common in these English classes. Another comment left on my draft of my Exploratory Essay was left by Sarah. She said, Maybe explain what a Child Life Specialist would do. She also told me to include more background information to make my paper more interesting to readers. This young lady was very helpful to me and my writing this semester, and even though we arent in the same group anymore, I know I can ask her questions about my writing that she will give her full attention to as well as her honest opinion, and for that I am truly grateful for her help.

Midterm
My midterm is something that I was very proud of when I first completed it. But after getting feedback I realized that it still had some work that needed to be done. I was a bit shocked, but then I thought to myself, No piece writing is perfect, there is always something that could use some improvement. With the feedback I was given from Professor Ingram, I had more to work with. I was able to go back to my midterm and address the issues that I had with my writing. Some questions were left unanswered and some of the answered questions were quite vague. Something that I stated in my midterm was, During the first few weeks of this class, there was a Reading Response Letter due. I failed to turn it in because I didnt have a book yet, but I made no effort to try to get an extension or talk to Mrs. Ingram about it. Also, there have been blog posts to our Weeblys that I have barely turned in by the due date. In my feedback from Mrs. Ingram was the response, You can make up RRL #1 by including it and discussing it in your e-Portfolio. The beauty of the portfolio class is that you can always catch up on late work and include it in your portfolio to build our ethos as a strong student who is trying to make up

Martin 5 what she missed. I was glad to hear this feedback, because I didnt want to be penalized for making a bad decision and not turning in my assignment, so I was sure to include the first reader response letter in my portfolio! Also, the question of Why didnt you discuss any of the key concepts? You didnt answer the entire question. So with that being said, I added this portion to my midterm: A key concept that Im struggling with at this time would have to be is curiosity. A lot of times in class, our warm-ups will be to ask questions. I know this seems to be the simplest concept to grasp, but for some reason, I tend to struggle with this one. When Im alone, I have tons of questions running through my mine but when Im asked to write them down, my mind goes blank. Some key concepts that I feel like I am doing great at are the writing process and revision and providing and receiving feedback. Especially with the e-Portfolio coming up, I am revising all of my work and editing everything Ive done. I am noticing a lot of patterns that I know I can work on in the future. Also, when Mrs. Ingram gives us feedback, I feel like I am doing a superb job at understanding what she means and applying those comments to my work to make it better! Im glad that I added this part because I really didnt think about my flaws as a writer until I looked into the key concepts a little more. Something else I fixed about my midterm was number 2. Mrs. Ingram said, You did a nice job with #2 but you could go more in-depth in a couple places there, too. How do you know the intended audience of that e-Portfolio is the professor and the classmates? What does the author do to help you come to that conclusion? I went back and added to that number of the midterm. I added, I believe the intended audience to the blog is of course the professor, but also the authors classmates. I know this because the author addresses his/her professor. And in their reader response letters, the author addresses the classmates. I am proud of the changes I made to my midterm and I think it is better than it was

Martin 6 when I first finished it. I thought the original draft was great, but now, having following the rules and having things laid out a bit more clear, I think its at its best.

Annotated Bibliography
The annotated bibliography has honestly given me hell these past few weeks. I clashed with this project many times and I will be happy when it is submitted and I never have to research about it again! I havent received much feedback about this project because I never submitted a hard copy to be reviewed by Professor Ingram, so I hope that when it is finally submitted that it is everything it should be. We can all tell that the first draft of my annotated bibliography posted on my e-Portfolio is anything but flawless. It was lazily put together and I honestly had no idea what I was doing at the time. I thought it was supposed to branch out from our Exploratory Essay and then as we kept discussing it in class, I began to realize that I was going about it all wrong. I didnt even include sources in my first draft. Hows that for lazy? Well, now my paper has come full circle and I made choices as a writer that I have never made before. After researching a ton about charities and how they help and how their proceeds work, I am pretty proud of my work. I have sources and I even tackled my fear of in text citations! My thesis statement is something that I had a hard time dealing with. It has evolved more than enough times and I finally got the right idea when Professor Ingram handed back our MultiGenre reflections. So from there I changed my thesis, or added to it rather, and it flows much better with my paper now!

Multi-Genre Pieces and Reflection

Martin 7 I am excited to write about my multi-genre project because I received feedback saying that my reflection is probably the best, most thoughtful writing youve done this semester. I was pleased to hear this because this is one piece that I actually sat down to do without doing it at the last minute. This just goes to show that when you take your time to understand your assignments and complete them in a calm and relaxed environment it can make such a difference. That is something that I am learning so I am actually now writing and completing my portfolio weeks earlier than necessary. I am planning on having it completed by the time I have my conference so that I can see what Ill need to work on to achieve an A. One comment left in my reflection by Professor Ingram was, Megan, one question left unanswered is, did you find organizations that arent as trustworthy as March of Dimes and St. Judes? If so, that might be part of your thesis. I then went back into my reflection and added, Many people in this day and time are extremely hesitant when it comes to giving their hard earned money to charities. I, myself, have a hard time trusting certain places that collect because, believe it or not, there are in fact greedy organizations. An example of a charity that is untrustworthy is the Childrens Charitable Fund. The Childrens Charitable Fund, an organization that roughly resembles the Make-A-Wish foundation, was given a poor rating by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. It spends only 10% of its revenues on charitable programs, and has not shown itself to be either forthcoming or transparent with its finances. In addition, nearly 2% of revenues are given over to pay that CEOs salary (Business Pundit). This type of behavior from charities such as this one is what gives legitimate charities a hard time. And those who truly want to help children are in a tough position when it comes to giving. However, since 100% of proceeds do, in fact, benefit the child recipients in some way, people and businesses should feel more comfortable giving to March of Dimes and St. Judes. This in turn also helped build my

Martin 8 thesis statement, which was also a comment left for me to do: refine my thesis. This reflection actually helped me with a few kinks in my annotated bibliography paper.

Process Work
The process work is probably my favorite part of the portfolio. I feel like my process work shows off what I did and how much Ive grown this semester as a writer. It gives Mrs. Ingram a chance to see where my writing was months ago, and she can now compare it to the final drafts that are included in my portfolio. I included my Exploratory Essay, Annotated Bibliography, and Multi Genre Reflection drafts. It is very apparent that I started out lazily when writing these drafts, but I feel like the final copies, although will never be perfect, are still strong, and I hope that is evident within my e-Portfolio.

Feedback Artifacts
For this section, I chose to include the feedback from my multi-genre project. Mrs. Ingram gave me some great feedback, one example was Megan, one question left unanswered is, did you find organizations that arent as trustworthy as March of Dimes and St. Judes? If so, that might be part of your thesis. This feedback helped me realize that I could use a lot of work when it came to my annotated bibliography. I then expanded my thesis statement which broadened the topic so much more. The second artifact was the feedback from both my classmates and Mrs. Ingram on my exploratory essay. These two artifacts had the most helpful comments, which is why I chose to show case them. I feel like with these feedback pieces in my portfolio, it shows just how much my writing has grown from the first drafts to the final copies.

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Writers Notebook Artifacts

My writers notebook artifacts include a reader response letter and a warm up. The reader response letter was the first one we did. As I stated above, I failed to turn in my RRL #1 on time due to not having a book. However, Mrs. Ingram mentioned that we can make up missed work by including them in our e-portfolios. I immediately jumped at the opportunity to do this because I hate missing work in class. The second piece is a warm up that we did in class about what we expect out of our groups. I learned a lot about group work this semester, and this example helped us sort out what we expect out of each other. One of the questions in this warm up was What can each group do? For this specific question, I responded, each group can provide a hard cop y of our drafts to make it easier for peer review, give plenty of noes for feedback in the margins of the paper, and to look at all parts for the most beneficial feedback possible.

Wild Cards
For my Wild card pieces, I had no idea that we could use anything. Up until my meeting with Mrs. Ingram, I was confused on so many levels about this project. I heard Jessica, a girl from my group say that she was including her syllabus into her portfolio as one of her wild card pieces. I immediately thought about it and after reviewing the class Weebly with the directions about the project, I decided to do the same. A wild card can be anything that helped you during this course, and I chose to include the syllabus and the multi modal page. Both of these pieces have helped me tremendously. The syllabus has everything you need to know. From grades, attendance policy, a little look into our papers, ad of course the class schedule which I looked at often. The multi modal page was included because it helped me as well. I had never heard of the five modes and when we looked at it as a class, I became more and more familiar with them.

Martin 10 Everything you write has at least two modes, and that was something I didnt know. So now, every time I write something, I am sure to dig a little deeper and see what modes I am trying to communicate to my reader.

Key Concepts
A key concept that Im struggling with at this time would have to be curiosity. A lot of times in class, our warm-ups will be to ask questions. I know this seems to be the simplest concept to grasp, but for some reason, I tend to struggle with this one. When Im alone, I have tons of questions running through my mine but when Im asked to write them down, my mind goes blank. Some key concepts that I feel like I am doing great at are the writing process and revision and providing and receiving feedback. Especially with the e-Portfolio coming up, I am revising all of my work and editing everything Ive done. I am noticing a lot of patterns that I know I can work on in the future. Also, when Mrs. Ingram gives us feedback, I feel like I am doing a superb job at understanding what she means and applying those comments to my work to make it better!

My Grade
During the time of the midterm, I believe I was sitting at a B in this course. I stated, During the first few weeks of this class, there was a Reading Response Letter due. I failed to turn it in because I didnt have a book yet, but I made no effort to try to get an extension or talk to Mrs. Ingram about it. Also, there have been blog posts to our Weeblys that I have barely turned in by the due date. An A grade says that all work and efforts are exemplary, and I feel like I could do a better job at being more responsible when it comes to due dates for my class work. I

Martin 11 also need to put more effort into my blog posts. The requirement for most of them are 300-500 words, and I feel like I do the bare minimum. Yes, I turn in all of my work, but its not grade A work. Its B work. And hopefully I can do better so I can pull through with a grade that is deserving; hopefully an A! and I was not very happy to hear otherwise from Mrs. Ingram, but Im glad I did. She wrote to me in her response to my midterm, I slightly disagree with your self-assessment and would put you at a C right now. You are correct that being more thorough will help boost your grade. This answer was definitely unexpected, but looking back now, I know why I got that response and can only hope that her opinion has changed. An A in this class is described as: A 100-90 exemplary: e-Portfolio is complete, thoughtfully arranged and easily navigable. As explained in the Portfolio Essay, 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 honestly believe I deserve an A in this English course. I am a very honest and self-aware person and I would assess myself that grade if I didnt think I earned it. Since the midterm, many things have changed. I havent missed any more class, which has helped me grasp the concept of the papers much more clearly. I even skipped the best concert of my life on April 10 to attend class because I wanted to make sure that I still had a chance to make an A and that is something that I am still striving to do today. I also believe I deserve an A because for the first time in my life, I am hitting the library, a safe haven where I can concentrate and complete my best work, to do my papers. This is something I have never done before and I feel like I am taking on a sense of independence and responsibility that Ive never had before. I honestly have been working my tail off trying to revise each piece of writing and take to heart all of the feedback that I have been

Martin 12 given to ensure that each piece is at its best for my portfolio. Ive never worked harder to achieve a good grade like his before. My writing may not be the best, and it has many flaws, but the work and dedication put into it shows that I do want to succeed in this course with flying colors and I will do what it takes to earn my grade. Here I am writing this paper that isnt due for another three weeks. This is totally unlike me! I am more of the go with the flow, play now work later kind of studentbut not anymore. I have been struggling with academic suspension and this semester is my semester to buckle down and look at the bigger picture. I didnt do poorly last semester because I am a college party girl who never went to class. I am actually a good student, I just had my priorities mixed up. Thankfully I am getting them in order now. Better late than never right?

My Growth as a Writer
My writing this semester has grown exponentially. From my own personal opinion I have learned so much from his course. In my former English classes, we never had multi-genre pieces, annotated bibliographies, or even reader response letters. So coming into this course, I was pretty much new to everything. In high school I always received As on my writing, and in community college I felt as though my English professor just gave everyone an A for effort. That was nice at the time, but what did I learn from that course? How could my writing grow if I didnt get any beneficial feedback? Im the type of person who like to hear feedback so that I know what I need to do to make my writing better and better with each revision. Now in this English 1102 course, coming into it was hard because I actually had to work harder to achieve a good review on my papers. Ive honestly never been more stressed about whether or not my papers will make the cut. Professor Ingram is a very intelligent woman and its easy to tell that

Martin 13 she wants us all to succeed. She isnt one of those lousy teachers who sit back and let you make your writing choices and barely skims over the final copy before placing an effort grade on it. She takes the time to help us understand and answer all of our basic questions. I am grateful that she has helped me come out of my comfort zone with my writing this semester, and although I do not have any more English courses to take, I do have writing intensive courses and I believe my time in her class this semester will help me in the long run with my future classes here at UNC Charlotte.