Quote: "Portfolios are student oreinted, whereas folders are usually teachers' collections--students choose which samples of work will be placed in portfolios... portfolios focus on students' strengths, not their weaknesses."
Comment: I think portfolios are a really great ways to assess student achievement over time; students can select work they are proud of. Portfolios can show what the students have been sucessful in, but are still representations of their individual levels and improvement. Probably the samples put into the portfolio at the end of the year will be better than the ones put in at the beginning, but the student has had a hand in creating something that he or she can be proud of. I think portfolios are a really positive way to include students in assessment, and I love that they focus on strengths rather than weakness or failures that the students may have experienced. I also really like that they are collections of students' practical work; they aren't necessarily a series of standardized test scores (which I don't think are that accurate of an assessment of what students can do anyways) but are a compilation of student work that students have chosen themselves, and have had a chance to edit and work on and then select as something they're proud of.
Question: How often do you have to, or should you, use other types of assessment, and would it be good to sometimes include samples of high scores on those assessments in a portfolio?
I think it would be up to the student whether or not they wanted to include high score in a portfolio. I really like that students get to decide what was their best work and what they liked the best personally. So, I think we should let them decide. A portfolio is also a good way to show progress. I think you do need to include a vareity of other types of assessments. Each child will be better represented by a different type of assessment. Some really might be assessed the best by a multiple choice test.
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