Assignment/Activity TitleThoreau Crane Comparative Essay YearFreshman Skill Writing, Literature Portfolio CategoryCritical Reasoning

The Thoreau Crane comparative essay was based off the books Walden by Henry David Thoreau and Maggie, A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane. This piece of writing is one of the longest I have ever written, and at first, the length of the writing was daunting as I first sat to write. But as I began writing, I realized how quickly the information I had in my pre-write could fill the page. By the end of the first of the five pages, I realized I had only done my introduction paragraph, which meant I was right on track, and by the time I had used all the quotes and completed all the points I had in my layout for the paper, the pages were filled with information comparing the two authors and their points of view. After I had completed my first draft and handed it in, I was very thankful that it would be corrected before we had to hand in the final draft. My paper had many small technical errors as well as one big conceptual one that threw off the meaning of one of my paragraphs and gave it a completely different meaning than what I had originally intended. The small errors were normally problems with my direct quotes from the book, and compiled because I used a lot of quotes, so because of the correction, I was able to fix all the mistakes and improve my writing dramatically from my first draft to my second and final draft. I am putting this essay in the critical reasoning category because this essay forced me to think about two completely different stories and two completely different people from different time periods, and see that even from different stories the authors can share views on different topics and can disagree on others. This shows that some societal problems are relevant in many different time periods. Of course some problems are relevant only to certain time periods, such as slavery back in the 1800s, but some problems, like the essentials for living, are disputed throughout history, and are points brought up in both stories by each author. I had to analyze each authors writing to see if they a greed or disagreed on certain points, as some of their views were hidden in their respective pieces of literature. I think others will be impressed with my product because I worked hard on the research for quotes from each book and I spent a good amount of time typing and revising my work, and I also had help with corrections so I could better complete the assignment. If I could redo the essay, I would pay a lot more attention to the small details while reading the books and try to retain the small details of the story that could provide me with evidence for my essay. Comparative writing was not a whole new skill, as I wrote a comparative essay earlier in the year, but analyzing books to do the essay was a whole new skill I had to learn, using books for research instead of the web.

Student Signature

Date

Teacher Signature

Date

Advisor Signature

Date

Assignment/Activity Title SkillWriting, Media, Research.

YearFreshman, Sophomore PortfolioCritical Reasoning, Ethics.

Metacognitive ReflectionThe following questions ARE NOT A SCRIPT!! Use the ideas within the questions to reflect on the assignment and its significance to you. Your reflection MUST use Times New Roman font, size 11, single spacing

How does this assignment reflect your growth in the category in which you are placing it? How have you changed as a result of this assignment? Why is it important to include this piece in your portfolio? How and where does this fit in with your prior knowledge? How do you think that others will react to this product? What process did you use to complete the product? What did you learn by doing this assignment? How does the portfolio product illustrate the connection(s) you've made between yourself and the course material? In what ways would you do things differently if you could do it over again? What did you discover about yourself? How does it relate to your future? How does it illustrate your strengths and/or weaknesses? What obstacles and challenges did you have to deal with, and how did this struggle change you? How does the portfolio product show that your perspective on the world has deepened? How does it relate to your understanding of the world around you? Which of your accomplishments makes you feel most proud?

Student Signature

Date

Teacher Signature

Date

Advisor Signature

Date