Please include the following items in your Midterm Portfolio:
-A Cover Letter (150-200 words, single-spaced) that addresses the following questions: What have you learned about writing so far this semester? How have your views about yourself as a writer changed (or not) since the start of the class? In what ways do the two informal pieces of writing you’ve included in your portfolio represent how you’ve developed as a thinker/writer in the course so far? Is there anything else you’d like me to know about your experience of or performance in the class?
–“Scene of Learning” Narrative (900-1000 words, double spaced). For this essay, your task is to describe a “scene” from your own education. The scene could have taken place in a school setting or in your everyday life (as we’ve discussed, learning is not limited to school). You may choose to write about a particular experience that was meaningful in your evolution as a learner—a time when you genuinely learned something, when something “clicked” for you. Or you may choose to write about an experience that you associate with struggle, or with a failure to learn something. Regardless of which option you choose, your essay should do the following: 1) Describe your experience in vivid detail (What happened exactly? Where did it take place? Who was involved? How old were you at the time? What did the experience look, feel, smell, sound like? Etc.) As a piece of writing, your essay should make the reader feel as if they are experiencing everything along with you. That is, it should do more “showing” than “telling”; 2) Reflect on why this experience was significant, disruptive, and/or perhaps damaging in terms of your own development as a learner. What did you take away from this experience and why or how does that knowledge matter to you now?
-Two pieces of informal writing that you have completed this semester. You can choose any informal writing you’d like (it might be a Collab post or an in-class writing exercise or journal entry), but try to pick the writing that you’re most proud of, or that contains the most interesting ideas. I’d encourage you to revise and polish this writing as well (especially if it was an in-class writing exercise). Think of these as examples that represent important moments in your writing/thinking in the class (they might reflect your progress as a writer and/or a turning point in your thinking, for instance).
Please email me the contents of your portfolio as a single Word (.doc or .docx) document labeled like this: “LastName_MidtermPortfolio” (e.g. “Smith_MidtermPortfolio). I will not accept Google Docs or PDFs.
Midterm Portfolios are due via email at 11:59pm on Thursday October 6th.
Experiments in Learning 