Portfolio Assessment for use with Project Based Learning

During my time in the Literacy Block in JSU's early childhood and elementary education program, I was required to take a course on assessment. While in this course I became familiar with the process of using portfolios for formative and summative assessment. I initially began to favor portfolio assessment because it offered a very authentic view of my students' growth over time. I have points in my educational journey that I am not particularly proud of ... like the time I had to call my dad and explain why I made a 56% on my first college math test... or the time in high school physics when my
Suspension bridge {attempt} in high school physics
file folder suspension bridge broke because I didn't read the directions precisely... and then there was one time in middle school when I was the leader for a group book talk and I led the talk about the wrong book for three days... but I would never put those instances in a professional portfolio for a job interview! Those moments don't define who I am as a student and therefore are not a complete enough picture of my educational journey. I would never call a parent-teacher conference and only discuss one single grade with the parents. That doesn't summarize their child and honestly may not mean that much at all. However, a portfolio offers a larger window into a student's educational journey. By focusing on reasonable academic and behavioral goals for each student, the teacher and student can fill his or her portfolio with artifacts to showcase potential and growth as well as individual curiosities.
Throughout the course, I kept finding paths back to the benefits of portfolio assessment:

  • It is an orderly way to collect students' work. 
  • The work can be chosen by the students which in turn helps to raise self-esteem. 
  • Portfolios help to foster self-regulated learning in students which helps the students to make more thought out decisions about their education as they become more self-aware.
  • Portfolios can be used along with rubrics which are very conducive to grading.
My list of positives just kept growing until finally, it was time to give a presentation on a form of assessment we could "see ourselves genuinely using in the teaching field." My choice was a no-brainer. I decided to combine my two favorite things from my assessment course: portfolio assessment and project-based learning. You can view my presentation here { Portfolio Assessment for use with Project Based Learning } as well as the handout for the presentation below! 


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