Our solution to Individualized Learning and Assessment
Year 2 Year Portfolios
“Well-designed portfolios represent important, contextualized learning that requires complex thinking and expressive skills. Portfolios are being heralded as vehicles that provide a more equitable and sensitive portrait of what students know and are able to do. Portfolios encourage teachers and schools to focus on important student outcomes, provide parents and the community with credible evidence of student achievement, and inform policy and practice at every level of the educational system.” (Hermann & Winters in Barrett, 2007)
Portfolios have been used in schools for many years, we all remember the scrapbooks and files of our work handed to us at the end of the school year often given with our year end report card. They showed snapshots of our work and progress over the year. Now portfolios are electronic, using multi-media and stored online, in databases, or on a computer.
WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY? Research shows that students at all levels see assessment as something that is done to them on their classwork by someone else. Beyond "percent correct," assigned letter grades, and grammatical or arithmetic errors, many students have little knowledge of what is involved in evaluating their classwork. Portfolios can provide structure for involving students in developing and understanding criteria for good efforts, in coming to see the criteria as their own, and in applying the criteria to their own and other students' work. (U.S. Department of Education in Barett, 2007)
Involving the student in their own learning and assessment through the selection of artifacts and in the feedback and reflection process is an important element of formative assessment.