This exercise focused specifically on how to approach the final portfolio, the final assignment of the semester that essentially asks students to revise, label, and arrange their work as though it’s an essay collection. Portfolios are evaluated holistically. Many Composition & Rhetoric departments end on something similar, so I thought I’d do a short write-up of an activity that worked for me.

I often get blank stares when I talk about the reasons why authors arrange short story or essay collections in a particular way, but when it comes to making playlists for parties or other events, the same students are able to easily organize music in a particular order for a particular reason, as well as focus each playlist around a given theme (e.g., family barbeque, gym workout, date night, prom).

I allow students to use computers during class and listen to music during in-class writing, so I didn’t need to tell them anything in advance. For this exercise, you should ask students to bring their laptops or iPods to class. This exercise also requires some close monitoring, as it’s very easy for students to get distracted by each other’s music or get caught up in having fun and forget to do the work altogether.

I put students in groups of three and told them to think of a specific event or activity—not a generic party, for instance—and then plan a playlist or mixtape for it. Playlists were to be approximately 10 songs long, and songs were to be united by a common element, such as genre, theme, content, or so on. Songs had to be organized in the order they were to be played. I asked students to write down their playlists on a sheet of paper but to exclude the event they had chosen.

Then, on a separate sheet of paper, I had students write a 3-5 sentence “label” explaining why they selected the songs they did. They then wrote a phrase for each song, explaining why it was placed where it was and what the intended effect of that placement was. The exercise was extremely successful; students were very engaged and needed minimal reminders from me to stay on task. Some of them were even nodding, “Oh, I get it,” before the exercise was even over.

Next, I had groups buddy-up and switch playlists. Each had to then guess the other group’s event and reasoning for placement. I then had them swap their labels to compare their guesses with their partner group’s intention. Finally, I polled the class about the experience. It turned out that almost all of the groups were able to pinpoint their partners’ events right away. I asked each group, “What tipped you off?” and they were able to identify the themes and uniting elements—whether the word “summer” in all songs on a barbecue playlist, or the pumped-up nature of songs on a workout playlist—and explain how they related these elements together to identify the event.

This exercise took roughly 60 mins total, though I think it could be compressed. It was the last day of class, so I was a little lax on timing.

Before we adjourned for the semester, I explained again how the portfolio should be labeled and arranged, and we talked about the essays as though they were songs in a playlist: that is, where should they be placed in order to really “hook” the reader? There was a little initial confusion as we were suddenly talking in the abstract, and I found myself wishing I’d asked them to bring their portfolio materials so they could practice the kind of thinking they’d just done on something more concrete. You may want to keep that in mind if you choose to use or adapt this lesson.

Still working out the kinks, I feel like the final connection between the exercise and the portfolio could have been better, but I think it was a solid start, nevertheless.