1st Day Reflections

I've been given space and time to do lots of thinking today, both alone and with my colleagues.  We as a team came prepared to focus our work this week on supporting students as they begin working with us to build portfolios of their learning.

One distinction that resonated with me about portfolio work that I hadn't considered before is the idea of two different types of portfolios:  Portfolios for learning and Portfolios as learning.  A colleague shared a link to an article that helped prompt my thinking:  11 Essentials for Excellent ePortfolios

Here's the distinction:

A portfolio for learning is often a short-term capstone project that will be assessed summatively. So, at the end of the year, students put selections of their work into a portfolio to assess their learning. This is often a showcase portfolio, or a sample of students' best work.

A portfolio as learning typically has an extended timeframe. This is often formative assessment, but students will also self-reflect and assess themselves. These process portfolios promote student reflection and ownership of the learning process.

Will have to do some thinking about the difference between the two and what we really want our students to be able to do.  

I'll plan to share with the team tomorrow this graphic so we can start making decisions: