Chris Flowers

21 April 2017

FPE

Starting this class, I didnt like writing. I felt like I was terrible at writing. I still do. I

was just trying to get this class over with and move on to the next thing. I didnt think I

would have fun or actually learn anything in this class. To my surprise, it was different I

had a little bit of fun and I actually learned quite a bit in this class. One of the biggest

things Ive learned was how to peer review. My original thought when peer reviewing

was being nice and that Im a terrible writer so I shouldnt criticize anyone elses writing.

Now I know that is not the case. And it actually hinders the person who Im peer

reviewing instead of helping. What Ive learned to do is, even if the persons draft looks

amazing and I cant find anything grammatically wrong, unorganized, or not enough

information, to put suggestions and give feedback. I also learned that feedback

shouldnt just be for the bad but also the good, even things I like.

Another big thing Ive learned from this class is the importance of brainstorming

and drafts. I was never one to write drafts for anything. My drafts were me just typing

out the paper. Looking for errors and then sending that in. I never did any proofreading

or got any peer review on it. This was a big reason why I didnt like writing or English

classes. We wrote a lot of drafts in this class and I learned how to actually use drafts to

make my writing more precise. I learned how brainstorming and putting my ideas on
paper as soon as I have an idea. Keeping my ideas on paper not only helps me

organize them but also allows me to stay focus on one topic.

How I learned how to do peer review is actually the reading from Richard Straub.

Straubs writing Responding-Really Responding-to Other Students Writing, helped me

by answering the simple questions I had. Be always of two (or three) minds about your

response to the paper. You like the paper, but it could use more interesting detail. You

found this statement interesting, but it could be outstanding if the writer said what was

really bothering her. Always be ready to praise. But always look to point to places that

are not working well or that are not yet working as well as they might. Always be ready

to expect more from the writer. (Richard 140), this means that you should praise the

parts that you like or that you think is good and you should point to places that are not

working well. This gave me a good idea and allowed me to become just a bit better at

peer review.

I learned how to brainstorm by doing the activities we had to do for the Extended

Inquiry Project. The activity that I learned brainstorming from is the Topic worksheet for

UWRT 1102 EIP(Extended Inquiry Projects). By following all the question and

thoroughly answering them I learned how to brainstorm. It gave me questions to ask

myself for any topic. As well as a way to organize my thoughts. I even learned how to

make a web where it shows connections between keywords to search for books and as

well as topics on the internet.

 Since Ive explained what Ive learned is peer review and how to do peer review

the next thing that happens would be revising and editing. Since coming into this class

Ive learned a lot about what to do before the writing, it only makes sense that I learned

what to do after. Thanks to everyone in class taking peer review seriously and actually

giving really good feedback, as well as, the teacher I could honestly read through and

revise and edit my papers to make them a lot better. A lot of my revising and editing, I

feel, were just simple grammar issues and reorganizing my structures. I loved getting

good feedback on my papers because when I do, and I edit and revise them, I make

sure to keep those points as strong as possible. I like to add more to the already strong

points my classmates point out to keep to my paper as strong as possible. How it

worked was Id type my draft and bring it in and then put on the back of my paper what

aspect of my writing I feel least confident on and then the teacher or my classmates

would read my letter and look for the problems I think my writing had. They also look for

things I could add to make my paper better, they also look at my paper and comment on

the things I did good and they liked. Id get my paper back and then read the comments

and correct whatever mistakes I made. For example, on my Developing Curiosity, my

letter says I need help with staying focus and maybe expanding on my ideas., so

when I get my paper peer reviewed Ill get more comments on the structure of my paper

and organization and then edited off of the comments and new ideas and revise.

When you first go through my e-portfolio, the first artifact I wanted people to see

was my midterm, the sandbox page. What I wanted to show is what Ive learned...so far!

And then when they go through the rest they can understand a little more about my
process. Also since its my midterm, they can understand my problem and maybe itll

give the viewer a little more, insight on what Ive been trying to get better at.

The next thing is my Developing Curiosity artifact. I placed this artifact here

because its the first big paper that we did. Its also a requirement for the FEP (Final

Essay Project/e-portfolio). I also think this is here to show what we did to get ready for

our EIP(Extended Inquiry Project) projects and Inquiry question.

After, is the annotated Bibliography, this is here again for the requirement but its

also placed here to show the next thing we did was practicing making annotated

bibliographies. We did it early because this was for the EIP. We made our annotated bib

first to have information to add into our Inquiry Project. So, it just makes sense to place

this next on the list.

So, now we have the Developing Curiosity and annotated bibliography artifacts.

The next artifact would be the multigenre project. This is the project to show all of our

research we did and how we answered our Inquiry project question. We also show the

audience we want to appeal to. Its kind of aligned with the timeline of classes.

Next we move over to the Writers Choice Artifacts and the first thing is the work

artifacts. I placed the doodles and scrabble and prewriting notes to show my

brainstorming process. These just show my process. I even added as my most

important artifact for this as the activity we did in the library with the keyword web

connections.

The feedback artifacts is next, this is here because after the drafts its feedback.

For these I placed my favorite pieces I got feedback on. I put the developing curiosity
essay feedback and the annotated bibliography feedback up because it was gave the

most feedback. It also made me feel more confidence about my writing and how to write

things correct.

The next thing is starting to get into what I learned. These are the Writers

notebook artifacts. These are here to show what was important to me and how I learned

from it. I used the RRL(Reader Response Letters) and the Mini-research project as

what Ive learned from. I learned from the feedback. I also learned how to organize my

writing and stay focused through these by reading the questions the teacher defined. It

shows I can do it if I can think of similar questions for any topic I am writing about.

This is the wild car artifact now. For this artifact I put my RRL #4. The

significance of the wild card being the RRL #4 is that its the latest thing I did as well as

something I am proud of. I think it serves its purpose and it fits the right artifact

requirement. I think I did pretty well on it without getting to excited.

I did do the makeup artifact. The makeup artifact I did was the blog post number

3. I technically had put this up because I didnt turn in my blog post 3. So, instead I

placed it up as the makeup artifact. The next thing was that I had already did the blog

post number 3. I did it to late though so now I placed it in as my makeup artifact.

Last, I have my blogs. We have been working on these all semester. I think the

blogs were all used to, shows that we read and comprehended the writing. We also

practice our writing and get warmed up for the day. We get our brain thinking doing

such and more ideas come naturally. The significance of the blogs are like a journal,

they keep entries that I have made and learned as well.

 Three key concepts that were muddy for me were critical reading, rhetorical

knowledge and knowledge of convention. How I better understood critical reading was

reading through the peer editing piece in class and I was able to fully understand peer

editing. Another was the reader response letters and blog posts that we had to read

something and write about it. And my idea was similar to my classmates. For rhetorical

knowledge our multi-genre projects helped me with this. For instance, my business

article needs to be serious because my audience would be businesses while my blog

post can be very informal and maybe should be to catch the attention of middle school

through college kids. Last I got better with knowledge of convention by creating the

annotated bibliography. Each of these took time but I got better at these key concepts

by completing assignments and getting good and bad feedback which I either fixed it

and learned or realised I learned from it.

The Design of my portfolio I was aiming for calming. When you open it I want it to

be easy on the eyes and calming. That's why my main tabs have a really nice looking

background. The content pages, I wanted to be a background color, so it doesn't

distract you from my artifacts but it's definitely filling the emptiness of the whole page.

My e-portfolio is fairly simple, the modes of communication I used was visual and

linguistic.

The grade I want is an A, the grade I deserve is hard to say. I put a lot of effort

and time into my e-portfolio and I used the A part of the syllabus as a checklist for my

own e-portfolio. I think I did well on the presentation as well. I think my presentation did
what it should have which is make people think about different routes other than

college. I believe I did work.

What I will take from this class and use in other classes is keeping a portfolio of

all of my previous work for a class to see if I had any growth from the beginning. I will

also use what I learned about peer review for the rest of my life. I will bring my

knowledge of peer review with me to the rest of my classes when looking over reports

and I'll also bring it to work with me. I think it was the most beneficial thing I've learned.