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last.updated 1.6.06

 

Teaching Portfolio

Purpose

The portfolio is a culmination of the work that you have done this semester. Many of the documents you compose throughout the semester can be placed in this teaching portfolio and can be used for employment purposes. Therefore, the purpose of the portfolio is to give you a leg up on putting together these professional documents.

The accompanying final statement is your opportunity to explain to the instructor what you know about teaching composition in the language arts classroom–in terms of both theory and practice. Furthermore, this document gives you the opportunity to explain to the instructor how your portfolio documents should be read.

Instructions–Unit Portfolio

The Unit Portfolio will include...

Organize these documents and place them into a manila folder (or a self-addressed stamped manila envelope if you want the evaluated portfolio prior to next semester).

Instructions–Final Statement

Unlike many of the other documents you have produced this semester, the audience for this document is specifically the instructor. This document, serving the same purposes as a final, is your opportunity to demonstrate what you have learned over the course of the semester.

The final statement is a justification of the work that you have done this semester. You are using this statement to demonstrate your understanding of the course material–both in theory and in practice. In essence, you are using this 500-750 word statement to explain how the corpus of beaching materials that you composed for this class works together and fits within a framework of sound pedagogy. Thus in this statement, you will...

  • explain how the various documents in your portfolio work together
  • demonstrate your understanding of the course readings and your own research; illustrate this knowledge by discussing specific features from the documents you produced
  • converse with the instructor about decisions that you made in your documents (e.g., point out strengths, discuss your uncertainties, anticipate critiques, respond to previous comments). You do not have to talk about every single document; highlight what you think is most important
  • respond to the evaluation of your Pedagogical Presentation; explain what you might do differently in your next teaching experience.
  • sources that you reference in this statement, should be cited using a MLA format.


Criteria

The Teaching Portfolio is due on April 25th .

The Teaching Portfolio is a final grade and is worth 200 points. The instructor will determine your grade by evaluating how well the corpus of documents work together, rather than assigning a grade or point value to each document in the portfolio.

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

  • compliance with the criteria listed for each piece of the portfolio (see links above)
  • cohesiveness among the portfolio documents
  • a sense of audience–are the Teaching Philosophy and Unit Plan with rationale written to an administrative audience who may decide your employment status? Is the Assignment Sheet written for a student audience? Is the Final Statement written to the instructor?
  • a neat, organized easy to navigate portfolio
  • an informed understanding of language arts curriculum theory and your ability to articulate this understanding
  • your ability to support your Final Statement with useful examples from your documents and thoughtful analysis from the readings
  • appropriate use of conventions throughout the portfolio, including MLA citation formatting
  • a teacherly persona