Portfolios and literacy why

The goal is to guide the process carefully so portfolios don't become unwieldy and time-consuming collections of "stuff" that no one examines or uses to inform teaching.

You will collect reading data and writing projects throughout the year. Others identify particular times when the portfolio is examined in conjunction with the child; some pieces are sent home and others remain in the portfolio. Some general considerations for the type of the information to include in the portfolio follow:.

Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. Copyright c by Irene C. Published by Heinemann. Topics: Uncategorized. A year later, we began a long-term collaboration to design and implement classroom assessments that would help us document student progress on the learning outcomes, and that would also help us improve teaching and learning.

When we began this process, none of us could have imagined that it would last seven years, and none of us would have predicted that we would write this book. Now, after seven years of problem-solving, conducting action research, collecting data, and actually implementing portfolios, we are ready to share our work with teachers and administrators who want to change the face of literacy assessment and instruction.

The concepts and strategies contained in these pages have stood the test of time and of experimentation by many teachers working at many grade levels with students from diverse backgrounds. Our intention is not to provide a formula or prescription for how portfolios should look or how they should be implemented and used, but rather to take you through a process of thinking about how to put portfolios into action.

We hope to raise issues and offer ideas for your consideration; ultimately, the decisions to make are yours and they must fit with your goals for student learning, your particular students, your teaching style, and your purposes for keeping portfolios. Our aim is to foster good instruction-to view portfolios as an instructional tool as well as an assessment tool. In the end, it is good instruction that improves student achievement, not simply good assessment. This portfolio book is different from many other portfolio books in two important ways.

First, we systematically present a way of thinking about portfolios. The model, if you will, a process for making decisions about the type of portfolio, what to place in it, how to structure interactions with it, and how to use it to evaluate student progress and report to others. In other words, rather than simply providing ideas, we provide a problem-solving approach that teachers can use to make their own decisions.

We do this by describing the rationale and thinking behind what we do as we present examples from our own classrooms and our students. Planning for portfolios : Student portfolios contain examples of the whole continuum of student work, from brainstorming and personal notes, through drafts, personal letters, and examination questions, to polished, published products and presentations. Classes may decide to use stick-on dots of three colours to identify work according to type:.

Remind students who are unaccustomed to maintaining a portfolio to date all their work and to store everything until they make their selections. Storage files in the classroom may be helpful. Remind students who work on word processors to print a draft after each working session. To help students recognize the necessity of storing work from every stage in the learning process, have the class collaborate as early as possible on the list of required portfolio items.

Deciding on required portfolio items : Collaborate with students in determining a list of required items for their portfolios. Required portfolio items should be closely tied to the Senior 3 learning outcomes. Almost every learning outcome can be demonstrated by a product or by documentation in a portfolio. Facilitate the process of selecting required items by providing a list of learning outcomes that have been the focus of classroom work in the preceding weeks.

The list of required portfolio items should incorporate work in each of the six language arts and in the following categories:. This list will be the basis of the Table of Contents students develop for their portfolios. Criteria for assessing portfolios are developed through teacher and student collaboration before the portfolios are assembled. The criteria are not the list of required items, but are the learning outcomes that the pieces in the portfolios and the portfolios themselves demonstrate.

Portfolio assessment does not entail individual assessment of each piece included in the portfolio. Generally, each piece has been assessed previously. If the assessment identified weaknesses that the student would like to address, he or she should have the option of reworking an assignment before placing it in the portfolio. Peers, parents, and other audience members do not play a part in the formal assessment of learning outcomes through literacy portfolios.

They may, however, contribute to the celebration of student accomplishments through viewing the portfolios and recording their comments. A page is generally made available in the portfolio for parents, administrators, and other readers to add their responses when the portfolio is displayed.

Students may want to create a sheet that asks for particular kinds of responses from peers.