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How does a final portfolio demonstrate your growth and abilities as a reader and writer in College Writing R1A?

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Academic Honesty

Each piece of writing you submit must be ethically cited and written and revised only by you solely for this course and composed without the use of generative AI/LLMs unless otherwise disclosed and explicitly approved for a particular purpose by your instructor for a specific assignment

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View the Padlet Board to get inspired with creative design ideas to personalize your Padlet with your own unique user-friendly layout and navigation!

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In place of a final exam, you get to compile a final portfolio showcasing a variety of your best revised work – writing that you wrote in this course and revised with feedback from your peers and instructor, as well as with insight from your own reflective rereading of each draft.  Make sure to significantly revise every portfolio essay one more time before publishing it on your Portfolio Padlet! By pairing one early draft with a polished final draft (for one of the 3 or 4 polished thesis-driven pieces you include), you also show your final portfolio readers how substantially you have revised as you reflect on how you developed your draft across time by engaging in the revision process. For your readers, provide reflection on both the entire process and final product. Don't be shy about showing how far you've come - we want to see your "shitty first draft" (as Anne Lamott calls it) paired with a successful final draft so we can see for ourselves just how deeply you revised!

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Reflect meaningfully on your development as a reader and writer --describing different reading and writing processes you experimented with throughout the course. Use concrete examples unique to you & your writing to show the ways you modified your reading/writing processes and your essay drafts across the term.

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Complete this Portfolio Checklist before the portfolio submission deadline.

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During RRR week, you publish your final portfolio on Padlet for your readers: your instructor and another College Writing Programs instructor who also assesses your portfolio according to the CW R1A Text Analysis Essay Rubric and the portfolio guidelines described here.

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Before RRR Week you are encouraged to revise and edit your work one more time and discuss any questions that arise with your classmates, your instructor, a College Writing Programs consultant and/or a tutor at one of these four campus locations:

Residential Tutoring Program

Student Learning Center

Art of Writing

Athletic Study Center

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Peruse the CWR1A Student Portfolio Sample Set 2024-2025:

Enter the password below to visit the Padlet page with the set, and enter the password again to open each individual sample Padlet portfolio

Password: Revise24-25!

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Taking into consideration feedback from your instructor and peers, as well as your own self-assessment, you should substantially revise and edit each piece before publishing it in your portfolio, a collection of your best works from the course.

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Check with your instructor for exact due date between afternoon of Thursday, December 11 and morning of Friday, December 12. Do not make any changes to your portfolio after 12 noon on Friday, May 8, 2026. We will not read portfolios that have a time stamp after that date/time. Extensions on portfolios are not allowed.

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I am a writer Creative Commons Pixbay zero license

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Plagiarism Definitions & University Consequences

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View CWR1A Portfolio Assignment Spring 2026 Googledoc here

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Final Portfolio Assignment Spring 2026 CWR1A

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Your final portfolio should include:

Basic Information

to include in a text box/post

Your name as registered

Your section number

Total word count of reflective pieces and of final drafts

→Do not include word count for Works Cited/References nor for the early draft

Reflective pieces

(800-1000 words)

At the beginning of your portfolio, reflect on what you learned about yourself as both a reader and writer in this course. How does the writing in your portfolio demonstrate your abilities? Describe your reading and writing processes as well as the decisions you made while compiling, revising, and designing your portfolio.  Provide readers with concrete examples (anecdotes of your process, descriptions of how you responded to feedback, quoted comparisons of changes across drafts, etc.)  illustrating the process you followed for composing and revising each piece as well as what you achieved in the final revision.

At least 250 words out of the 800-1000 words of reflection should focus on your paired early and final drafts.  Describe in detail how you revised your early draft to arrive at your final draft.  Point out both major changes you made as well as minor edits. Reflect on what you learned and how the essay improved through revision:

Where did you reorganize paragraphs and/or claims? How did you rethink your thesis argument, introduction, conclusion, or overall structure?

Where did you add, remove, or redo a paragraph, a sub-argument, or a piece of evidence?  What led you to do this?

Where have you edited for syntax and word choice? What prompted that?

Explain why you made the revisions you did and how they may impact the reader.

3 or 4 pieces of writing

(3,000-4,500 words)

All pieces should include a title and a brief 1-2 sentence description of the assignment and focus, including the title and genre of the analyzed work

All pieces should include a bibliography – be it a Works Cited or References page at the end of each piece or a single bibliography that covers the entire portfolio

3 pieces must

be "thesis driven" -- advance a thesis and draw on sources such as assigned readings, films, surveys, interviews, etc.

1 piece must

demonstrate sustained attention to written text*

1 of the thesis-driven pieces must:

be paired with an early draft of the same piece of writing you include in its final polished version

An optional 4th piece may be a more “creative” or personal piece

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*What is sustained attention to written text?

An essay that demonstrates sustained attention to written text reveals that you have closely read and clearly understood a piece of writing and can go beyond a mere retelling of the plot or rehashing of the argument.  To closely analyze a book, article, or story, you make your own argument by quoting, paraphrasing, and/or summarizing evidence from the text -- considering not only what the writer wrote but how the writer wrote it.  Instead of merely summarizing the main ideas of a text or pulling a statistic from that piece of writing to support another argument, you engage meaningfully with the text as you craft your own thesis argument about that text – or use one text to provide a theoretical lens through which to analyze a second text.  Ultimately, explore the implications of your close text analysis – the “so what?!”.

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Check each item before submitting your portfolio

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Check each item before submitting your portfolio

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View CWR1A Portfolio Checklist Googledoc here

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People from across the disciplines create portfolios -- from architects and investors to visual artists and writers.

Portfolios entail 4 guiding factors:

Purpose

Audience

Evidence

Reflection

Relevant Types of Portfolios:

Showcase - a collection of best work used in assessment

Product - an array of work in various areas to show competence across genres

Developmental - a comparison of early and later versions of a piece of work to compare drafts & show progress through revision

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Create a free Padlet website of your own to publish your final portfolio.

View this under 2-minute Padlet design video for inspiration and tips -- even though every detail won't apply to your writing portfolio.

Go to padlet.com and select the left column "FREE FOREVER" with 3 free Padlets.

Create a free site using bmail or any email address. Remember whatever password you choose!

Go to SETTINGS (click on the gear in the top right corner)

Click "Make a Padlet"

Select the Blank Board option on left (not the Sand Box)

Under SETTINGS and ENGAGEMENT, choose format and turn COMMENTS and REACTIONS off

Choose the layout, color, wallpaper, etc. We recommend FREEFORM as it will give you more options to move around boxes!

Under SETTINGS go to ADVANCED to change the second half of the url address and name your website as you'd like--the first part of your email address will automatically be the first part of the url after padlet.com, but then you can replace the random assortment of letters and numbers after that. Share this url with your instructor.

For fun, you can go to SETTINGS and then HEADING and select the icon you want to show on the browser tab and top left of your Padlet page/site

Students need to password-protect the Padlet:

Go to SHARE --> in the top right corner with an arrow

Click on the SHARE arrow

Under PERMISSIONS at top, find "VISITORS with a Link"

Select "READER" and for PRIVACY OPTIONS select "Require Password" (Slide it ON)

Enter your Class Password (from your instructor) & Click SAVE

Check that your Share/Permissions settings do not require “visitors” to log in.

NOW HAVE FUN DESIGNING YOUR PADLET!

Play! Experiment with what you can post, and how to use different functions.

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Share your published Padlet link with your instructor a at least a couple weeks before the due date.

Finish revising and publishing your portfolio by the time and date your instructor announces in class and as stated on your course syllabus.

PROGRAM POLICY: ABSOLUTELY NO CHANGES/REVISIONS TO PADLET PORTFOLIOS ARE PERMITTED AFTER 12 NOON on FRIDAY OF RRR WEEK

(Your readers can see the how recently your Padlet was edited in the top left corner.)

REMINDERS FOR SUBMISSION

Googledocs are not permitted, as they cause problems with access permissions and the Googledoc could be edited after the Padlet portfolio submission deadline. Post your work as a pdf (or Word document) -- you can download either format from Googledrive, but be sure to check the formatting before posting on your Padlet!

Check that your class password works and that readers do not need to log in to view your portfolio.

When it’s time for your instructor to submit the portfolios, the instructor will simply submit a list of all student names along with student Padlet links and the password for your class/section.