Final Portfolio Instructions

Craft of Writing – Final Portfolio Project (part of 25% of your final grade)

Your portfolio should include a collection of CRAFTED writing (including first drafts), that are collected with a reflective essay.

Rubric:

Reflective creative essay (see below)
Poem (crafted)
Poem drafts
Short story (Fiction) (crafted)
Short story drafts
Play/Script (crafted)
Play/Script (draft)
Journalism article (crafted)
Journalism article drafts
Proofreading/Grammar, punctuation, "readability"
Portfolio turned in on time

Reflective piece: 3-4 pages, double-spaced. Write about how you’ve grown as a writer this year, what has been easy/hard for you, what areas do you need more work in; reflect on your progress as a writer and as a student. Write about each piece you have chosen to include in your portfolio: why did you include it in your portfolio? How does it show your growth and development as a writer in this particular genre? Discuss the crafting process you used to make the work better, what you learned about the form or genre of the work as you wrote and revised it, etc.

Poetry: Choose 1 poem that you wrote and crafted this year. This poem should show off your talent as a writer and suggest that you have learned a lot about the craft of poetry.

Fiction: choose 1 short story you wrote this year. Like the poem it should show your talent and understanding of the craft of fiction.

Play/Script: 1 script (film or stage play) you wrote this year. Like the poem and story, it should show your understanding of the craft of script writing.

Journalism: choose 1 journalism article you wrote this year. This article should show your skill at non-fiction.

What does CRAFTED mean?

• A crafted piece is NOT a first draft. It should take into account all the skills and techniques we covered in class to RE-see or re-vision the piece. A rewrite should take into account workshop suggestions (for example from peer advice or teacher comments, from the forum, or from individual conferences, or by other means.) It should NOT look exactly like your original draft. I encourage you to change form, structure, develop plot, character, setting, theme; increase conflict appropriately, change POV, create effective syntax and sentence construction, etc. In other words, use the LITERARY TECHNIQUES we covered this year to show off and explain your process.

For the reflective essay, you should be able to discuss how you craft your writing, what sort of advice you found helpful in working with the piece, perhaps which authors or models you used to help shape the work, what motivated you to come up with the idea, and how you went about composing, revising, and editing the piece.

Final portfolio due: before or on June 15 (Monday).