Many professionals such as artists, architects and designers use portfolios to

showcase their work and record their achievements. Teachers are

also being asked to use portfolios to document their accomplishments and
professional learning.

Recall what you already know about Portfolios and Portfolio

Assessment. The following prompts will help to activate your prior
knowledge.
· Compare and contrast report card grades and portfolios as a
means of communication about students' achievement. How are
they alike?
How are they different?
· What do you believe to be the major challenges that teachers face
in their use of portfolios and why is each a challenge?

· Consider the following viewpoints:

· Creating portfolios automatically makes you a
better teacher.
· Portfolios are easy to manage if you're an
organized person.
· Portfolios make learning easy for students.
· Self-reflection is at the heart of portfolios and
portfolio assessment.
Portfolios come in many forms and can hold many types of artifacts and evidence that tell a
complete story of achievement or growth. Portfolios
offer ways to communicate about student learning in greater detail than is permitted by report
card grades. This does not mean that they should
replace grades, but rather that we should see them as serving different purposes with different
users and uses. What are some of the benefits of portfolios?

For Students For Teachers For Parents Administrators

• shows growth •highlights •offers insight into what •provides evidence

over time performance-based their children do in school that teacher/school
•displays activities over year •facilitates communication goals are being met
student's •provides a between home and school •shows growth of
accomplishments framework for •gives the parents an students and
•helps students organizing student's opportunity to react to what teachers
make choices work their child is doing in •provides data from
•encourages them •encourages school and to their various sources
to take collaboration with development
responsibility for students, parents, •provides actual work
their work and teachers samples by their children
•demonstrates •showcases an •shows parents how to
how students ongoing curriculum make a portfolio so they
think •facilitates student may do one at home at the
information for same time
decision making
Reference:
http://www.uncp.edu/etc/webpage/Benefits_of_Using_Portfolios.html
What is a portfolio? A portfolio is a carefully
selected sample of a student's work to
illustrate significant learning throughout the
year. Portfolios can be used to represent
learning for one subject area, composite
learning for a particular grade, or learning
that spans several grades. Portfolios are one
way to collect students' work to show
progress over time. Portfolios become
powerful assessment tools when students
are engaged in reflecting on the learning
demonstrated by the artifacts collected.
Portfolios can range from very simple to very
comprehensive systems that reflect the
purpose of the portfolio. Unfortunately many
teachers have drowned in a sea of paper
trying to manage a mega-portfolio system.
The most effective portfolios are those that
grow naturally out of the classroom learning
where everyone understands the portfolio's
purpose, there is a shared vocabulary for
talking about the portfolios, students have
opportunities to think about and talk about
their portfolios, and students have an active
role in managing their portfolios.
When incorporating student literacy portfolios into
your classroom assessment package ask yourself
the following key questions:
· What is the purpose of the portfolio?
· What would I like to know about the students?
· What evidence/artifacts will best represent
student learning?
To recap, when developing a plan for using portfolios in
your classroom:
· Maintain a sharp focus: develop clear guidelines for
selecting material to be collected in the portfolio to
reflect dependable evidence of learning expectations.
· Rely on quality assessments: align expectations,
purposes, and assessment methods to provide
evidence.
· Be clear about the purpose.
· Develop a shared language: criteria for judging merit.
· Provide opportunities to collect evidence.
· Check for understanding through student self-
reflection.
Literacy Portfolios provide a tangible record of students' development as
readers, writers and oral and visual communicators. Many of the reading
assessment strategies investigated in previous topics can be part of a
student's literacy portfolio. As you investigate portfolios in more detail, you are
encouraged to use your knowledge of effective and authentic assessment to
think critically about the information and ideas presented.

Task #1:

Visit the following site:

http://www.prenhall.com/literacy_portfolios/html/portfolios.html
The site provides examples of what a literacy portfolio may look like at
different grade levels. Choose the example that applies to you. Skim
through the samples and information provided. You will also find
blackline masters at the end of the article that are included as part of the
portfolios.
Task #2:

1) Investigate and collect portfolio ideas and strategies from your personal collection, readings and online
searches. There are some starting points listed below.

Read the article in Orbit on Portfolio Assessment: Barb Bower and Carol Rolheiser. "Portfolio Assessment -
Organizing for Success", Orbit, pp. 47-49. Volume 30, Number 4, 2000.

Explore one or more of the following web sites on different aspects of portfolios:

http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4528.html
http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4530.html
http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4537.html
http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4535.html
http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4536.html
http://abcteach.com/directory/portfolios/goalsevaluations/
http://www.anglit.net/main/portfolio/default.htmlhttp://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/mla/assess.html#port
Task #3

Share your ideas and thoughts relating to Task #3 in the online professional dialogue.

Imagine that you are going to develop a student reading portfolio for your classroom.

· What is the purpose of the portfolio?

· What would you like to know about the student as a reader?
· What evidence/artifacts will best represent student learning?

You may want to include any forms that you may already be using within your own class that
others may benefit from.