Math Portfolios. Is It Really a Big Deal?

Have you worked or do you currently work at a school where student portfolios are enforced? If you said no to both of these, you should still consider having your classes create portfolios.

What's the big deal anyway?

Portfolios have little to do with you and everything to do with your students. Portfolios are critical because it provides opportunities for your students to frequently step back, pause, assess their learning and mastery of skills and concepts throughout the year, a necessary stage to learning. Students NEED to see how they are doing and be able to assess their work and draw conclusions about their problem solving, strategies and ways to improve. These habits help improve student learning from unit to unit.

In my courses, I have a "portfolio day" at the end of each unit. During this time, students receive all of their major assessments for the unit: Pre-Test, Post Test, and Performance Task. Students assess the Pre and Post Test to see how much they have grown from the beginning of the unit to the end. You may be surprised, but this is a reality wake up for many students and a time of excitement for others. Students who have been working hard throughout the unit typically have the highest levels of growth and enjoy the biggest victories. It becomes evident to students who experience small levels of growth, that they haven't been working very hard. These realizations are captured on portfolio day and students spend the time reflecting on their growth.

Aside from reflections, which I will talk more in detail later in this post, students also organize all of their portfolio artifacts (major assessments) neatly into their folders and fill out their table of contents. It is required that students pay attention to detail. Artifacts must appear in order and align to the table of contents. The table of contents list each item, the date it was completed, the grade the student received and the page number. The table of contents is an important component of student portfolios because it gives a snapshot, just like a book, of the contents of the portfolio. If anyone opens the file, he or she can decide where they'd like to spend time looking. I also like that the table of contents teach students to be organized, a critical skill that many of them lack.

In addition to the table of contents, students complete a learning target mastery tracker. All of my end of unit post exam questions are aligned to a learning target we have studied during the unit. Students are easily able to track which learning targets that have not mastered by using the tracker and analyzing their work on their unit exam. They mark off how well they mastered the learning target based on their work for the problem. This is great time to emphasize the need to SHOW YOUR WORK!

Students use the learning target mastery tracker to plot a line graph on a template that I've created.
They scale their x-axis as each learning target assessed and the y-axis as the mastery levels. I love that my students create line graphs because they can visually see how they are doing. Ideally, they want a straight horizontal line at four to show that they have mastered all the learning targets for that unit. In the picture below, this particular student is doing well. Most of the learning targets he mastered and only a few of them he got below a four. Students are able to use this line graph to also decide which goals they want to work on for the next unit.

The last step in this portfolio process is the reflection. Students will be given an outline, which can also be found in the bundle, that guides them in writing a thoughtful reflection in essay format about their performance in the unit. Students are penalized for turning in the outline and not a formal essay that addresses each question. The questions start off by asking students to recall some concepts and key terms learned in the unit, to describe moments they did their best work and provide artifacts and discuss them, to create goals and explain how they will hold themselves accountable, etc.

Students appreciate this opportunity because they get to spend time looking at their performance. They know they don't want to repeat mistakes and are willing to think about ways to improve their performance. I also grade the portfolios on organization and completion using a rubric and I use a separate rubric to grade the reflections as well.

Have you done portfolios in your math classes? What things work well and not so great? I'd love to hear any tips you find useful with portfolio work!

All Things Teach Rm 321