Introducing Portfolios in a Differentiated Classroom as a Means of Favouring Learner Autonomy and Student Reflection
Anne Sier, Luxembourg
Anne Sier studied at University of Dundee, graduated in July 2005 and started teaching in September 2006. She is currently teaching at the Lycée Aline Mayrisch, Luxembourg.
Menu
Types of portfolio
Personal experience
Conclusion
Bibliography
Generally, a portfolio is defined as being a collection. However, it is not just a random collection of everything a student produces, like the folders of student work normally used in the different subjects. Indeed, the pieces that go into a portfolio have been carefully selected for a certain purpose by the students, sometimes with the help of a teacher, based on a set of criteria. Most research distinguishes between 3 types of portfolios in a school context:
Working portfolio
It is a holding tank for student work, but unlike a work folder which contains every piece of work a student has ever done in a particular subject in a specific year, it is usually structured around a specific content area, which is determined through criteria or learning objectives set at the start. A working portfolio is a project in progress and as such can contain both completed as well as unfinished samples or drafts. (Danielson, pp.2.-3)
Display portfolio
A display portfolio, also sometimes called showcase portfolio, serves to exhibit a student’s best pieces of work and his/her achievements with regard to a set of learning objectives. This type of portfolio is especially popular in that it is a tool that allows students to show the work they are most proud of. Like the working portfolio, the display portfolio belongs to the student who chooses the pieces of work, possibly with the help of the teacher or his/her peers. The pieces selected can be taken from the working portfolio but they can also include work done outside of school, reflecting the student’s interests.
Assessment portfolio
Assessment portfolios serve to document what the students have learnt. They are generally used by teachers to determine whether a student is good enough to move on to the next level or grade or by the school district or state to determine whether a student will be allowed to move to a higher school or will receive a diploma. Their content as well as the assessment criteria are in this case often fixed by an external body rather than the students themselves or the teacher. (Goupil, p.21) Indeed, students are supposed to show with the pieces in their assessment portfolio that they have reached certain objectives of the curriculum. This type of portfolio is pretty much imposed upon the student and consequently is of considerably less appeal to the student than the other two types of portfolios. The student’s role in the selection process is also largely diminished, as the portfolio’s content has already been fixed by an external body, which leaves no room for personalisation.
While my first idea was simply to create a working portfolio, I soon realised that this would resemble a normal work folder too much, thus not standing out enough from normal lessons. Therefore, I decided to combine two types of portfolio, the working portfolio and the display portfolio. The working portfolio would contain the drafts, the final versions of the tasks as well as a short reflection card for each final version. After having completed all the tasks, the students would then select 3 final versions that they considered to be their best work and place it into the display portfolio. Not only would the students then be forced to reflect more carefully on their work, I would also gain useful insight into what they considered their best work and for what reasons. For organisational purposes, I decided to divide the portfolio into three parts: 1. Personal information, 2. Showcase and 3. Samples. The first part contained worksheets meant to illustrate the personality of the student. The students could also include extra material about themselves such as pictures, texts or drawings. The second part was to be the showcase containing 3 examples of their best work together with a green reflection sheet for each example. The third part was to be the working portfolio containing all the samples which consisted of drafts and final versions. Here, I requested that every final version was accompanied by a yellow reflection card. I copied the cards from the Portfolio Organizer (Rolheiser, pp.44-45), mainly because I liked the fact that they already contained a prompt, making it easier for my students to reflect upon their work. The reason I opted for coloured reflection sheets was to make them stand out from the body of the work. Indeed, student reflection is an essential part of portfolio work, as it helps students become more aware of themselves as learners. However, students are often unfamiliar with reflecting skills and need a lot of support by the teacher. One way of guiding the students is by offering them a selection of short prompts such as ‘I like best about this work...’ or ‘This piece was a challenge because...’, which are valuable in kicking off reflection, especially if the students are unsure on what to focus. It is of even greater use to practise reflection on some examples in class before letting the students do so with their own work in order to avoid basic or repetitive self-reflection. Setting up a list of criteria that their work has to meet can also help the students reflect on their own product. Indeed, if a set of criteria has been used in the selection process of their best work, the students can refer to it again during the subsequent reflection process. I am sure my students’ reflections would have been of a better quality had I heeded the last two suggestions. Finally, I asked my students to include an introductory letter based on a specific outline and the following prompts:
- My portfolio is organized into _________ parts. Part 1 contains ..., etc.
- My portfolio shows I am...
- My best piece of work is... (Why?)
- My favourite piece of work is... (Why?)
- The piece that shows my best effort is... (Why?)
- I think I have improved... I need to improve
This introductory letter serves the purpose of explaining what the portfolio is about to an audience unfamiliar with the project. It also provides an overview of the whole portfolio on just one page. Therefore, it can only be written at the very end of the portfolio process. One could say that the introductory letter is a more general reflection form, as it invites the students to look at the portfolio as a whole in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, this is also where the final step of the portfolio development process comes in: projection. Indeed, as a direct consequence of reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses, students are asked to think about goals for the future. The prompt ‘I need to improve...’ should help them in their projection. It is certainly also interesting for the teacher to see where his/her students see a need for improvement, which allows him/her then to adapt his/her teaching to the students’ needs.
One of the aims of portfolio work, besides favouring student reflection, was the promotion of learner autonomy. Thus, the students were in charge of the organisation of their portfolio, which was not always very easy, as some students tended to lose their work. Furthermore, all the work to be collected in the portfolio was based on a simplified novel we had read in class: ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ (Black Cat Edition). For this purpose, I had issued a task sheet containing set as well as more challenging optional tasks ranging from character descriptions to internet research on R. L. Stevenson. The students were given time in class to complete these tasks autonomously, handing in their completed work, which I then returned with suggestions for improvement. While it is certainly a good idea, especially in a differentiated classroom, to allow students to work at their own pace, I found it very hard to estimate the amount of time my students would need to complete the different tasks, and thus fixed the deadline much too early, which meant that the students had to work at home a lot in order to meet the deadline.
On the day of the deadline, before the students handed in their portfolios, I staged a portfolio fair in the classroom because I thought it important that the students were given the opportunity to show off the results of their efforts, especially as some portfolios truly were works of art. During the fair the students were free to wander from portfolio to portfolio to leaf through them and maybe gain new ideas for a future portfolio. Furthermore, they were asked to give written feedback on two of their classmates’ portfolios, which they had been assigned by draw. For this purpose, each student was given two blue clouds on which to write two positive and one negative comment. These clouds had to be included in the portfolio when handing it in. The students mostly commented on the general appearance of the portfolios as well as any extra material that was included, but they were also quick to point out any deficiencies like for example the lack of reflection cards. I think that, generally, the portfolio fair was a very rewarding and valorising experience. The students’ eagerness in discovering their peer’s comments as well as the look of pride on their faces when reading the positive feedback should be testimony enough.
Portfolios are generally thought to be an excellent alternative to traditional tests which only provide snapshots of a student’s level of learning at a specific time, because they reflect a student’s growth over a certain period of time and also allow students to show off their newly gained or perfected competences and skills in the pieces of work resulting from more complex tasks than the traditional tests. However, since this was a first attempt at portfolio work for both the students and myself, and since I had opted for a combined working and display portfolio rather than an assessment portfolio as well as a portfolio that only contained work done over a relatively short period of time, I was less concerned with my students’ progress reflected through their portfolio than with its overall presentation and completeness, which does not mean that I turned a blind eye on their efforts. Indeed, in most cases, the portfolio allowed me to observe a gradual deepening of the students’ understanding of the novel with each consecutive task they had completed.Nevertheless, inthe final evaluation of their portfolios, I focused on more general and superficial aspects such as presentation and content or completeness. Based on these two aspects, the students were given a grade out of 10 to be added to a test out of 50. I used an evaluation grid for this purpose, containing the two aspects or criteria and their clarifying rubrics. I distributed this evaluation grid to my students at the outset, so that they were constantly aware of the evaluation criteria and could therefore make sure their portfolio met them. That the students were aware of these criteria became evident in the peer assessment that took place during the portfolio fair, where they borrowed from the grid when commenting on each other’s performances. This is proof that reflection works best when students have something, e.g. a list of criteria of excellence, to refer back to.
In conclusion, I think that when first dealing with portfolio work one tends to focus overmuch on the end product, trying to determine its content and structure. In doing so, one vital part of portfolio work, self-reflection, is neglected. Indeed, as I realised during this project, it is not enough to ask the students to reflect on their work. They have to be shown and taught how to do so before they can effectively assess the worth of their own efforts. Despite my negligence in this area, my students have benefitted a lot from this experience, in that they have learnt how to organise themselves over an extended period of time, which is an essential step towards learner autonomy. But most importantly, portfolio work has proved to be a serious motivator in that students feel much more involved and consequently invest themselves more. This was reflected in the effort a lot of students put into personalising their portfolios with photos and art work and ultimately in the pride with which most of them showed off their portfolios at the portfolio fair.
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Goupil, G. et G. Lusignan. Le Portfolio au Secondaire (Montréal: Chenelière Education, 2006)
Hamp-Lyons, L. and W. Condon. Assessing the Portfolio: Principles for Practice, Theory and Research (Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press Inc., 2000)
Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching, 4th edition (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2007)
Hedge, T. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Kimeldorf, M. Creating Portfolios: For Success in School, Work and Life (Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing Inc., 1994)
Raynes, R. and A. Smith (eds.). R. L. Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Genoa: Black Cat Publishing, 2003)
Rolheiser, C., B. Bower, and L. Stevahn. The Portfolio Organizer: Succeeding with Portfolios in your Classroom (Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2000)
Xiaoyun, Y. ‘In Praise of the Portfolio’, in English Teaching Professional, Issue 55, March 2008
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