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Organize your portfolio.

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Some instructors prescribe the portfolio’s design and organization, while others allow students to be creative. Portfolios may be presented in an inexpensive manila folder, in a looseleaf binder, or on a Web site. Follow your instructor’s specific guidelines. Here are some possibilities for organizing your portfolio:

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Include a cover or front page. The design of the front page may be left up to you, but be sure to indicate the class section number, the instructor’s name, your own name, and the date.
Include a table of contents. Portfolios, like books, need a table of contents so that readers can see at a glance what is included and where it is located. The table of contents should appear at the beginning of the portfolio, identifying all of the parts and specifying the page on which each part begins. You may decide to renumber all of the pages in the portfolio consecutively, even though some of the material already has page numbers. If you add new page numbers, consider using a different color, putting the new page numbers in a new place, or using a letter-or word-number sequence (such as Event-1, Position-1, etc.). Whatever you decide, be consistent.
Label each item. If your instructor does not specify how you should label your work, you need to develop a clear system on your own. You may need to explain your system briefly in a note on the table of contents or in your introductory reflective essay, where you refer to particular items in your portfolio. For example, you could use the Guide chapter number to identify each essay assignment. To indicate process materials, consider using the chapter number and title and the relevant heading from that chapter’s Guide to Writing section (such as Chapter 2, Writing a Draft). To identify different drafts, you could write on the top left margin of every page the chapter number, essay title, and draft number. For drafts that received a critical reading, you might want to add the notation “Read by S.” You should also date all of your work.
Sequence the material. If your instructor does not indicate how you should order the work included in your portfolio, you will have to decide yourself. If your instructor asks you to present two or more examples of your best work, you may want to begin with the essay you consider your very best. If your instructor asks you to show the progress you have made in the course, you could begin with your weakest essay and either show how you improved it or present later essays that were stronger. If your instructor asks you to demonstrate growth, you might organize your work by the particular areas that improved. For example, you could show that you learned to rework your writing substantially by presenting multiple drafts. Or to show that you learned to edit effectively or to avoid certain sentence errors, you could give examples of a particular error you made one or two times early on but avoided in later drafts.