Portfolio Creation

The end of the school year is upon us and that means that we are all fran­ti­cal­ly search­ing for ways to wrap up the year and hit the beach. You may be shelv­ing books, clean­ing out binders, or even tak­ing end of year tests. One thing you should be com­plet­ing before hit­ting the beach though is cre­at­ing an annu­al port­fo­lio. Now, there are two types of port­fo­lios to con­sid­er each year. The first is the type that your high school stu­dents should be focus­ing on as a for­mal overview of their high school foci. You can read about some basic high school port­fo­lios at our blog post linked below.  The sec­ond is the work­ing port­fo­lio that you use to not just high­light, but show the work com­plet­ed over this past year. A work­ing port­fo­lio has a cou­ple of goals: 

1. Show progress : One of the things that a teacher looks for in a port­fo­lio is progress in your child’s work. Did your son’s hand­writ­ing, spelling, writ­ing, and math skills improve as the year progressed? 
2. Show mate­r­i­al : Most states require stu­dents com­plete work in spe­cif­ic areas of study. If your state requires library skills then you need to have some­thing in the port­fo­lio relat­ed to library skills. 

While it is true that some port­fo­lios are grand affairs, it is also true that some are sim­ple binders. As long as your child’s port­fo­lio accu­rate­ly meets the above goals, you are doing well. So file that paper­work, take a minute to give your child a high-five, and hit the beach!