Student portfolios

Teacher Steps in Creating Portfolios

• Decide on the type, growth, showcase or combination that your students will create.
• Decide on which subject(s) the portfolio will depict.
• Determine the timeline for the portfolio.
• Establish storage for the portfolio.
• Create an organizational model for the portfolio. Types of organizations could include: chronological, themes, topics, or categories, or according to specific criteria. Students could be involved in deciding the above. A table of contents should always be one of the pieces of the organizational model.
• Determine the elements of the portfolio.
• Determine who will choose the materials to be placed in the portfolio.

Tips on Student Portfolios by Bob Kizlik (2009)

• “Electronic portfolios have largely replaced the more traditional bound paper type as the ability to present not just information, but sound, motion, and color has become the standard. Whether in the many varieties of digital format, such as DVDs, CDs, the Internet, personal websites, flash drives, or printed on paper, portfolios are used in almost every aspect of communicating personal information.”

“Portfolios in classrooms today are derived from the visual and performing arts tradition in which they serve to showcase artists' accomplishments and personally favored works.”

• “Portfolios in classrooms today are derived from the visual and performing arts tradition in which they serve to showcase artists' accomplishments and personally favored works.”

“A portfolio may be a folder containing a student's best pieces and the student's evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the pieces. It may also contain one or more works-in-progress that illustrate the creation of a product, such as an essay, evolving through various stages of conception, drafting, and revision.”

• “A portfolio may be a folder containing a student's best pieces and the student's evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the pieces. It may also contain one or more works-in-progress that illustrate the creation of a product, such as an essay, evolving through various stages of conception, drafting, and revision.”

Why use student portfolios?

• Metacognition:
• To emphasize student’s role in constructing knowledge
• To record and be aware of activities undertaken over time in the development of written products
• To support cooperative teaming by offering an opportunity for students to share and comment on each other's work
• To assess student growth and learning by the student, peers, teacher, and family
• To get students to take a second look and think about how they could improve future work
• To provide structure for involving students in developing and understanding criteria for good efforts

How do I start”

• “In building a portfolio of selected pieces and explaining the basis for their choices, students generate criteria for good work, with teacher and peer input.”
• “Students need specifics with clear guidelines and examples to get started on their work, so these discussions need to be well guided and structured.”