Portfolio 2: Goals

Goals of Portfolio 2 include our desire to:

• Continue to develop student awareness of texts as ongoing conversations on issues of importance and relevance to themselves and the world
• Continue to develop engagement in the world of both problems and ideas through reading of a major national newspaper and to reassure students of their ability--and indeed their responsibility as adult citizens--to participate in the development of ideas and actions that contribute to improvements and solutions
• Continue to develop student awareness of texts as products of particular purposes, audiences, and contexts (rhetorical situations) and develop student ability to read such texts critically
• Introduce students to the idea that positions on issues are tied to the values, beliefs, attitudes, and affiliations of the people who hold them. Texts are but one outward manifestation of those commitments and associations.
• Work in a focused way on developing student accountability to ongoing conversations by encouraging them to read widely on issues of interest and importance to them, developing their own positions based on knowledge of the ongoing conversation and critical reading of the participant arguments rather than on uninformed and unchallenged opinions
• Enlarge the principles of objective, academic summary of texts to thorough analysis of their contexts, purposes, attitudes and associations.
• Continue to teach students how to focus, develop, and deeply revise their essays for educated audiences
• Continue to teach students how to make choices about the content and development of their writing based on context
• Continue to teach students how to incorporate knowledge gained from other sources (text evidence) into the development of their claims and reasons as well as how to use academic citation methods for such purposes