Portfolio 1: Overview

Portfolio 1:  Goals

  • Developing Accountability
  • Understanding the Conversation through Critical Reading
  • Writing a Summary/Response for an Educated, Public Audience

 

Goals of Portfolio 1 include our desire to:

1. Develop student awareness of texts as ongoing conversations on issues of importance and relevance to themselves and the world
2. 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

3.  Develop student awareness of texts as products of particular purposes, audiences, and contexts (rhetorical situations) and develop student ability to read such texts critically

4. Develop student accountability to ongoing conversations by encouraging them to read widely, to develop positions based on knowledge and critical reading rather than on unchallenged opinions
5. Teach students the principles of objective, academic summary of texts as a basis for effective responses
6. Teach students how to focus and develop their own texts (response essays) for educated audiences
7. Teach students how to make choices about the content and development of their writing based on context
8. Teach students how to incorporate their own experiences into their responses while also moving outside the self to incorporate knowledge gained from other sources (text evidence)
9. Teach students how to do deep (global rather than merely local or stylistic) revision of their writing
10. Introduce students to the conventions associated with citing sources