Student portfolios are becoming more relevant as an assessment tool in today's classrooms. As we’ve seen an increase in hybrid learning, the emergence of digital portfolios has increased. Used not only as a tool for documenting student growth, but it’s also a great tool to give families a more accurate window into the classroom to answer the age-old question, “what did you learn in school today?”
The use of student portfolios creates the opportunity for students to become more self-directed learners as they start to collect and share the learning that they feel most proud of. In addition to giving students more autonomy over their learning, it also provides educators with a better understanding of students' mastery of a certain subject. It highlights the opportunities for growth and improvement.
Click here to access the complete guide to understanding Student Portfolios.
Ideas for Using Digital Portfolios in K-12
There are many ways in which you can utilize student portfolios. We’re sharing student portfolio ideas that can be created in a SpacesEDU account and ideas for how to use them.
Growth Portfolio
Show growth or progress over time
Using SpacesEDU, educators can capture student growth and progress throughout the year. With the use of Curriculum Tags, educators can track student progress toward specific state standards and can begin organizing their students' work, tracking achievement of curriculum goals, and documenting growth in key areas for any subject.
Help develop goal-setting
Educators can help students build goal-setting skills through ongoing feedback. When providing feedback, the primary focus should be to connect feedback to the assessment’s learning objective(s). Depending on the teaching context, a learning objective can take the form of a standard, a competency, a curricular strand, etc. In SpacesEDU, learning objectives are visible via curriculum tags. The objective still needs to be explicitly taught, but it is one strategy for making learning visible.
Identify strengths and weaknesses
Utilizing ongoing feedback gives students the opportunity to reflect on their work and show their strengths and weaknesses. By providing feedback, students can reevaluate their submissions and improve or address questions asked by the teacher. This creates a unique window into the learning and making the progress visual for each student.
Personal Showcase Portfolio
Showcase end-of-year accomplishments
At the end of the school year, it’s a great opportunity to ask students to reflect on their learning. In SpacesEDU, students can showcase their memories from the school year within the class feed. As students share their accomplishments, it’s an opportunity to highlight the personal growth of each student.
Prepare a collection of best or most important work
As students approach the end of their high school career and look to prepare for post-secondary life, this is a great opportunity to collect their best and most important work in a portfolio.
Communicate a student's current learning levels to future teachers
In addition to showcasing work, educators can collect evidence of learning to share with student’s future teachers as they progress through K-12. With the addition of Proficiency Scales and Curriculum Tags, future teachers can easily get a snapshot of their students competency and proficiency using SpacesEDU.
