Dear Reader,
This is a collection of some of my best pieces that I wrote during the first semester of my senior year at Penfield High School. I wrote these in my English elective, College Composition, with Ms Basko. These are all unfinished papers that have been reviewed by my peers and teachers and somewhat revised by myself over the semester.
College Composition, I didn't really know what to expect when I first started the class. I had heard rumors that we write our college essays and other things but it was nothing like what I expected. We learned many different types of papers; characterization, exemplification and narrative to name a few. Ms Basko forced me to expand my creativeness to a point that I had never been before. This was very good for me because I am not a naturally creative person so pushing me to be creative was something that I wasn't very happy about but in the long run it really paid off which I am glad about.
These pieces cover a variety of different writing styles and topics that we learned and studied. For most of our papers we would read an example of a writing style and we would break it down and find what we needed to do to write this paper in a similar way. After that we would do peer revisions to see where we could expand on ideas or continue thoughts more in depth.
The new conclusions I did for my 7 deadly sins paper were a way for us to practice writing new conclusions that really summarized and emphasized what I wanted the reader to understand. My picture paper was probably my favorite paper that I wrote this year. It is the most incomplete but I was able to write a story about whatever I wanted to and had the freedom to do what I wanted. The "how to" paper was also very fun to write because it was also very open-ended and it was the only group writing we did. We got to choose what we wanted to teach people, we chose "how to utilize your senior skip day". We chose this because we wanted to make sure that our classmates didn't mess up the most classic day of your high school experience. Next we needed to reflect on our 7 deadly sins paper, this was difficult for me because I couldn't find a topic that I liked and could write a good story for. I ended up doing soccer because I felt that I am very knowledgeable about the subject. Our next paper was one that we could really "take a bite out of", it was my food paper about chocolate chip cookies. We spent a whole class taste testing different brands of cookies and talking about them in groups. Then we had to write a paper about the different cookies that we ate and compare them. I talked about which ones I liked and which ones I disliked along with more details such as texture how moist they were and so on. After that we were challenged to write 3 new introductions to our food paper, we did this to practice grabbing the attention of the reader while still addressing the topic of our paper. This was one of the hardest things for me to do because most of my papers in the past were very bland and didn't have good intros, but I am very pleased with how these turned out.
In the beginning of this class I wasn't a very strong writer, I didn't feel comfortable writing, and I didn't enjoy it at all. I really struggled with my introductions and being creative with things such as titles and ways to catch the readers attention. I also wasn't able to expand my ideas and make the story "flow" together.
After the semester was over I felt like I was able to write more creatively and thoroughly than I could at the beginning. I also think that I was able to complete my thoughts and tell the reader what I wanted to in a way that was interesting and attention grabbing.
I wish that I could have had more time to work on some of these pieces because I felt I had good ideas but wasn't able to finish. I would have rather done 2-3 very well written papers this semester than the 10-12 drafts we did.
Overall this class was very good for me as a writer because it forced me to go out of my comfort zone with my writing and expand my views on writing papers. This was very beneficial to me and was a good step towards getting me ready for college next year.
I hope you enjoy
Eric DeHond
Eric,
ReplyDeleteThe letter to the reader needs to introduce the entire collection I don't think you have changed this at all since the last version.
The rubric indicates that the following should be addressed in this section:
•A description of the contents
•An explanation of these contents, strengths, weaknesses
•A reflection on your writing process
•Self evaluation
•Revision justification & other background information
This should be a letter of many paragraphs to that shows much reflection to the entire collection and reflects on all you learned during the semester by using your writing as evidence.
This is what my blog site said about writing the letter to the reader:
Here are some guidelines for your letter to the reader of your portfolio. The letter should be at the top of your blog and the goal of the Letter to the Reader is to introduce the entire collection of work to the reader.
Begin by reflection on what you have learned this semester. You might discuss what you thought of yourself as a writer when you first signed up for class and what your self-perceptions of yourself as a writer were early in the course. How have you grown as a writer? What do you think are the greatest strides you've made? How do you know this? What pieces in your portfolio show this growth and learning?
Then take time to introduce each of the blog posts you did. What is significant about each? What do you want the reader of your portfolio to notice about each entry and what you learned?
The format for the letter to the reader is friendly in tone and should actually be in the form of a letter. You can create a unique title for the entry but then the text can actually begin with "Dear Reader," and it can end with a closing of some final thoughts and your signature as you would find it in a letter.
Let me know if you have any questions. I have a sample that I will share later but I only have a hard copy of it and will need to type it in for you. If you have done portfolios before, the format for the introductory letter to the reader is often the same.
Here is an excellent sample by Tori and Clara:
http://tr-collegecomp.blogspot.com/
http://clarabblog.blogspot.com/
You should really revise this before I regrade it.
Ms. Basko