Reflective Cover Letter for Final Portfolio
As you know, you’ll be submitting your two strongest revised essays for final portfolio,
but there’s one more document that goes into your final portfolio as well. That document is a
reflective cover
letter
wherein you introduce those revised essays—and yourself as a thoughtful
writer—to your portfolio reader. This introductory letter is an absolutely authentic kind of
assignment since in many walks of life individuals are required to produce such introductory
documents for various sorts or plans, proposals, and finished products.
In this particular
introductory letter you’ll explain to your portfolio reader how the revised essays you’ve
included suggest your strengths as an essay writer and the ways your strengths have grown
over the quarter, offering specifics from the essays and the process you went through to
create them to illustrate how the essays reveal the strengths and growth you identify
.
Why is this document called a
reflective
letter? No, not because it’s supposed to be real
shiny. Rather, because you’re being asked to reflect on, i.e. to think carefully about, your own
practices as a writer and on how your strongest essay work reveals what you’ve learned about
essay writing and what you’re capable of in your writing. You’ve already had numerous smaller-
scale occasions for writerly reflection this quarter—anytime you considered the first question on
side two of our Peer Conference Record Sheet or considered the comments your peers offered in
