The Power of Portfolios

Do you use an ongoing portfolio system? How do you keep track of students’ daily performance each day, month, or year? What if each teacher turned in useful student work samples to the student’s new teacher for the upcoming school year? If so, this would help the upcoming teacher make informed decisions based on the student’s previous performance. The reality is, the more data we have, the better informed our instructional decisions will be. Portfolios aren’t perfect—new students don’t have portfolios when they first enroll in the school, portfolios are sometimes incomplete, and students’ skill mastery may erode somewhat during long breaks—but it is valuable nonetheless. Even if the use of a portfolio isn’t your reality, having access to any of your students’ previous work may help you to get a better idea of your students’ strengths and needs.
As you begin looking through students’ portfolios, I have identified places where the use of a portfolio can help start a conversation and give a stronger picture of a student’s strengths and areas of growth:

• Grade level planning meetings
• Data meetings
• Parent conferences
• PLCs
• Student conferences
  

​So the question is, how can you use portfolios to get to know your students’ strengths and needs? Portfolios provide a snapshot of the strengths and areas of growth for students. There are great benefits for using portfolios as a strong data point to quickly determine a great starting point for the year. Because there isn’t a formula for developing portfolios each year, it can be challenging to know what’s useful and what’s not.