Year—Freshman —Critieal Thinking Paper ‘Assignment/Activity Title Ceti Portfolio Category—Criteal Thinking ‘Skill—Media, Writing, Research For this portfolio entry, 1 chose to write about my Critical Thinking Paper because itis the assignment ent s how Maryland should incorpor ‘am most proud of as of yet in CAP. The topic of my paper WAS " testing under the No Child Let Behind replacement: Every Student Succeeds. 1 am proud of this Sas Toa uititade of reasons, For one, it was the first assignment this year that I scheduled out time to-do, and" do, and gave myself mini-deadlines for indi tual parts of the paper. Normally, I just wait until the last week or ete when I feel like it, but | thought that doing the assignment in such an undisciplined way would detract Guality from the paper. Tused a checklist on my phone that would send me reminders on when Thad to write Specific parts of the paper. At firs, this was difficult, because I kept geting the feeling of “losing steam” when Twvasn't writing, This went away however, and the assignment, which had seemed to be big, sary, and hard tg manage quickly lost its ability to stress me. By splitting the large paper into several more manageable parts, 1 ‘was able to increase the quality of my work by not being forced to rush to a premature finish, “The paper also taught me to better construct arguments with the evidence I had. I wrote about standardized testing and its role in Every Student Succeeds, and I planned to just talk about how terrible Standardized testing was overall. However, when I was performing research, I discovered that my arguments ‘would have to be generic and shoddy in order to blanket standardized testing asa whole. As T performed research and wrote my paper's introduction, I began thinking about how I should write my paper to successfully Ctiticize standardized testing but still have a relevant and strong argument. T had to interweave arguments about the qualms of standardized testing, as well as explaining how accountability systems are often dysfunctional when relying too heavily on standardized tests. This assignment taught me a better way to perform complex tasks that normally would be very daunting. T've changed the way J normally would frame and approach assignments, and I have a little more understanding of why I find assignments stressful and how to better avoid that stress. With the information that I've leaned through this assignment, I'll be able to create hopefully better quality work. LT fhe— 3 oe 6 Student Signature Date Aas 3 Teacher Signature fate ‘Advisor Signature Date