Reflective+Letter

 As I look throughout my portfolio, overall I am very happy about the work I produced. I believe the reason I have very pleased with my work is because everything I have written I have enjoyed working on and composing. Each piece is very interesting to me and relates to my everyday life. Writing pieces such as these, especially in the midst of all my other courses, helped reminded me why I enjoyed writing so much and also reinforced my wish to become English and writing teacher. I also would love to employ writing strategies and prompts very similar to the ones we have created into my future classroom. I believe such strategies will help students realize just how wonderful writing can actually be, especially if they are writing about something they enjoy and it breaks up the monotony of the typical formal writing they are forced to accomplish.  When I began each writing piece, with exception to the unfamiliar genre project, my inspiration came from a writing prompt we all had to complete in class. For example, at the beginning of the semester when we were first going over different types of writing genres, we had a prompt in which we took a subject we loved, I chose the sport softball, and had to create expressive, informative and argumentative writing all on the same subject. From this prompt, my expressive essay was formed. What I had written on my notebook paper actually turned into my introduction, with some revision of course.  Once I began my pieces I tried to create the first draft to be as complete as possible in order to get appropriate feedback from peers in the classroom. I have always been a big advocate for brainstorming and produce my best work when I can talk to another individual about what I am creating. I truly enjoyed the type of peering editing we did in class because we did not simply proof read a peer’s writing, but provided suggestions on how to improve our work and make it more cohesive. We were also told to ask one question about our work so our peers could answer it which allowed us to get receive more narrow feedback on what we thought our weaknesses were. Many of the revisions I made in my pieces came from suggestions on the days we peer reviewed. I truly believe that a peer review process such as this will be very beneficial in a secondary classroom. Often students are either too worried to give feedback, or to timid to ask to receive it. By allowing the students to ask a question about their work and what they would like to see addressed, lessens the anxiety students might have about the peer review process.  For all of my pieces, my goal was to simply write something that was quality work as well as something I was proud of and enjoyed. The piece I am most proud of is the expository piece in which I used a prompt from Gallagher’s textbook in the inform and explain chapter called “How to Survive.” When we were presenting this chapter, and it came time for everyone to write in class, I had no idea what I had started to write would have become so important to me. I wrote about the current semester which has been the most difficult semester I have ever faced. With all the anger and anguish this semester caused me, it was a very powerful piece as well as an outlet for myself. Due to my personal connection on this piece, it is truly my favorite and I put most of my effort into writing it.  I found this class to be very enlightening when it came to teaching younger students about writing. When I was a student in high school, I found writing to be boring, uneventful, and found no true relevance in the type of writing we were doing. Most of the exercises we did this semester in class taught me that the type of writing I was doing back in high school could be changed in a way that could be interesting to the students and still fulfill all the necessary requirements that the students need to learn. If we would have done the type of writing we did this semester, I know for a fact that I would have enjoyed writing a whole lot more.  Looking back on the semester, one of my favorite parts was the unfamiliar genre project. I truly enjoyed looking into a genre I have never approached before and learning the ins and outs about how to accomplish that type of writing. I also enjoyed the fact that everyone had the freedom and opportunity to choose a genre that would be interesting to them. All too often are students forced to write about certain topics in certain styles, and this project breaks that barrier and allows students to write freely about what interests them.  Although the unfamiliar genre was favorite project, it was also my most difficult. At first, when beginning the project, I did not realize the amount of research and exploration was required before I could really start writing. Even then, after the large amount of time spent looking at other examples, I had to start my pieces over many times. This project was very enlightening because, being much further along in my education than my future students will be, it made me realize that the students are often going through the same struggling processes on a daily basis when I have become very comfortable with most types of writing. I realized that what comes naturally to me, may not come naturally to other students and I will have to find a way to better teach specific topics and types of writing to them.  Overall, I believe I have a good writer, and this class helped reinforce that belief. However, writing is continually changing and there is always something to improve on. I know I can work on the overall finesse of my work and make the final pieces more polished. When it comes to teaching writing, I believe I need to constantly remind myself that, although I like my style of writing, every student’s style is different and I should not push students to write more like myself, but encourage them to embrace their own writing style and to continue writing.
 * Portfolio Reflection **