English 199E, Winter 2014
Portfolio and Reflective Letter Assignment
Reflective Letter is DUE on Tuesday, December 18 by 10:30 AM. Late assignments will not be
accepted.
Your portfolio includes all of your work for this class, including:
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rough drafts
written homework
conference memos
in-class freewrites
the worksheets I asked you to do during your colleagues’ presentations
It does not include your presentation drafts—those are graded separately.
All of that was due already and you (should) have already done it; and since this is not a revision
portfolio, you won’t be revising any of it, so you don’t need to worry about it. The only thing you need
to turn in is the reflective (aka cover) letter.
Your portfolio also includes a written reflection that will function as a cover letter for your portfolio. It’s
the written reflection that you will be turning in on March 18. This assignment sheet covers the
instructions and requirements for that assignment.
Instructions for Writing the Reflective Letter
To prepare:
To prepare for writing your reflective letter, I’d like you to first review my objectives for this course that
I discussed in the syllabus. I wrote that my objectives for this course are to promote greater comfort,
confidence, and competence in:
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critically analyzing, summarizing, and synthesizing texts from within the discipline of Biology,
including the related abilities of recognizing and evaluating writers’ purposes, claims, and
supporting evidence.
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making connections between texts, identifying and/or articulating how different texts affirm,
extend, qualify, and/or conflict with each other.
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analyzing and evaluating your own writing and the writing of your peers in order to generate
revision suggestions that result in successful and substantive revision (i.e., revising the guts of
the writing rather than surface details like syntax, spelling, and grammar).
Then, skim over all of the work that you’ve produced for this class. I’d like you to look for patterns in
your work, especially patterns related to the course objectives. In other words, do you see yourself
becoming more competent in any of areas listed above? Did you feel more comfortable or confident as
the quarter went on? Most importantly, be honest about what you perceive to be areas of strength,
areas of improvement, and areas that you still need to work on.
In your reflective letter, please write about the following:
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Tell me about the changes you’ve seen—or haven’t seen—in your comfort, confidence, and
competence with respect to the three objectives, above. Please refer to specific assignments
where you see indications of these developments (no, direct quoting is not necessary).
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Tell me about what you perceive to be your strengths and what areas of your writing you
believe you still need to work on.
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Tell me about the extent to which writing about concepts from Biology 180 extended or
deepened your understanding of some of the concepts from the course.
In your letter, please DO NOT:
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Tell me about me or about the course. You will have an opportunity to evaluate my teaching
and the quality of the course when we do course evaluations.
Assessment/Grading of your Portfolio
As you know, most of your work for this class has been evaluated in terms of its demonstration of ECI,
or engaged critical intelligence. You can see these grades in the course gradebook. Your cover letter
will be evaluated the same way as any other homework assignment or freewrite during the quarter.
All assignments in the portfolio carry the same weight. Your grade will be based on the ratio of
completed assignments to total assignments, and that ratio will be converted to the 4.0 scale—so, if
you did half of the work for the portfolio, your portfolio grade would be a 2.0.
The portfolio is worth 35% of your final grade.
Requirements
Please use 12-point, Times New Roman font. Set your margins to 1 inch all around. Double-space your
letter. Please do not include a title page or a references page.
Your reflection should be between 2-4 double-spaced pages.
Your reflection is due on Tuesday, March 18 by 10:30 am. Please upload it to the dropbox. Do not
print.