- Volume 5, Issue 4, 1997

Describes how 20 teachers enrolled in a three-week summer course on literacy assessment, through their own experiences and work in the course, internalized the theory that when students are given the opportunity to evaluate themselves, their learning is more meaningful and more permanent, their work demonstrates real commitment, and they value their growth.

Describes how a resource specialist and five third graders struggling to read made student self-evaluation a centerpiece of their work together. Describes the improvements achieved as students learned to evaluate their own reading and writing, set their own goals, and plan their own learning. Tells how students confidently presented their portfolios to the Individual Education Plan team and parents.

Describes how a fifth-grade teacher, who had been sharing evaluation with her students for some time, made the change to writing report card comments together with her students, thus sharing evaluation in one more way.

Describes how the author, a reading specialist, worked with a first grader who was struggling to read. Describes the use of portfolios as a place for students to see growth and a way to become an active and self-confident learner.

Describes how a special education resource teacher, in collaboration with a fifth-grade teacher, changed plans and adapted to the needs of the students by implementing portfolios, student reflection and self-evaluation, and peer conferencing. Shows how portfolios allow all children (including special education students) to shine, to see their progress, and to set goals for themselves.

Describes how a teacher who taught the same group of students for fourth and fifth grades taught her students to set reading goals, work to achieve them, reflect on them, use self-evaluation to set new goals, and use portfolios to assess their results. Notes that her students used these tools to learn to be critical thinkers as well.

Describes beliefs which support the theory that the center of evaluation is the student as evaluator in a classroom of a teacher researcher. Notes that teachers need each other for support and for forward momentum as they pursue their own goals.

Describes a middle school language arts teacher’s bulletin board portfolio that includes snapshots of students, quotes, reflections, and more to show how, through artifacts and reflections and other ways of bringing their total selves to school, students’ evaluations of themselves and of each other became more whole.

Describes what a teacher learned when she asked her first-grade students weekly to recall what the teacher said to them. Notes lessons learned from doing this–children’s work, behavior, attitudes and lives are all mixed together; children are listening even when they seem inattentive; and every category of response was connected to the teacher’s power.

Describes how one participant in a summer course for teachers on literacy assessment shared what she had learned with teachers in her district by conducting a workshop, and later by forming a study group. Describes how the study group experience helped teachers to teach students how to evaluate their own growth as learners.

Describes a year–long staff development course called “Exploring the Possibilities with Portfolios” that developed into a small and close–knit community. Notes that the group learned they could not separate their personal and professional lives, and that it was fundamental to the group’s success that they acknowledge strengths and weaknesses, confusions and beliefs, answers and questions.

Describes how the author’s eleventh–grade and twelfth–grade students initially resisted setting their own goals and reflecting on their own work. Notes that the students felt that elementary school teachers should allow students to have choices, teach them to self’evaluate, and encourage them to set individual goals as early in life as possible.

Lists several important features of Gosbee’s classroom, including establishing a community, the ability to adjust to change, listening, self–reflection and assessment, connection with other fine arts, and working with her class as a fellow writer and reader. Full article available in print version only.

In allegorical terms and an idealistic, the author characterizes the process of creating in a portfolio setting. Full article available in print version only.

A list of helpful resources pertaining to the use of portfolios for evaluating literature and writing. Full article available in print version only.

Full text available in print version only.