Using Assessment Portfolios for Engagement and Growth
What is an assessment portfolio?
This is a single place or document where students keep track of their summative (and maybe even some formative) assessments. In this space students:
- Record their marks and feedback.
- Identify their strengths and areas of growth.
- Reflect on their learning, performance, and factors that may have led to their performance.
- Set clear goals that target specific skills and behaviors for the next unit.
Why should I use an assessment portfolio?
Research shows the most effective feedback practices have students engage with the feedback they receive. This practice, getting students to understand their individual power to control their goals, learning, and subsequent performance, is more important than the type of feedback they receive (although, we want to consider this too – and will be the subject of several future posts).
In practice, how does this work?
When a marked assessment is returned to a student, they engage with their assessment feedback and set new learning goals based on this feedback in an Assessment Portfolio which has been designed to guide this process. This is completed in class so teachers can be available to students to clarify feedback and help them set learning goals for the next unit.
This is also an opportunity for teachers to explain how rubric marks are translated to holistic grades (A-F, 1-7, etc.). Students always want to know, “How do I improve my grade?”, and the answer lies in the rubric criteria. This practice gets students to engage with the rubric criteria and develop an understanding that each criterion is assessing different skills. Showing students which skills are assessed in each criterion helps them develop an understanding of the role skill development plays in their learning. The post “Reading and Communication Standards Organized by IB Criterion” organizes the US Common Core standards by IB criterion so students can see which skills are assessed under each criterion (a pdf is also available for download below). Having students familiarize themselves with the skills assessed in each criterion helps students target specific skills and set clear goals for their learning.
Looking at standards can be overwhelming, which is why we suggest asking students to first set a criterion goal and then choose skills/standards to target under that criterion. Students can further narrow the goal by looking at the standards for “Literature” vs. “Language and Literature” under Criteria A and B. Teachers can even choose to narrow the goal setting task for students: “We are all going to set a goal for Criterion A – Literature“, and only give students the list of the skills/standards under the prescribed criterion. This approach can be helpful early in the course so that teachers can actively target specific skill instruction and differentiation in the activities and lessons of the subsequent unit. For younger students, teachers may even want to simplify the language of the standards before disseminating it to students.
Added benefits
- Students quickly become comfortable with the reflection and goal setting process. They like the predictable routine and are assured they will have an opportunity to ask clarifying questions about the assessment and their individual feedback.
- Students develop agency over their learning in the course.
- In student-led parent teacher conferences, students are able to insightfully communicate where they are in their skill development and learning in the course.
- This practice reduces the number of meetings students ask for outside of class to discuss their assessments, which gives both parties more time.
- The documentation practice makes it easy for students and teachers to access past assessments, their performance, and reflect on these assessments in preparation for externally validated assessments (such as the IB Individual Oral or HL Essay).
- For externally assessed courses, students are rarely surprised by their predicted grade in the course.
Resources
Word
**The PDF version of the “Reading and Communication Standards Organized by IB Criterion” is a free resource. They are also available here:
Other Considerations
Once students are comfortable reflecting on their assessments and setting clear goals, teachers may want to consider how they can further target and support students’ growth. One consideration is to offer an Assessment Menu, which gives students choice over which assessment(s) they pursue to target specific skills and demonstrate their learning. For more information on how to use an Assessment Menu, read this post: