We Need More Portfolios in Math Class!

Welcome back! Thanks for sticking it out with me. It's been a wild semester and we're almost at the end. Just two weeks to go. This week in class we discussed the difference between assessment and evaluation and the assessment cycle that often takes place in the math classroom.

Let's start with the difference between assessment and evaluation. As teachers, when we assess, we are looking at what students are doing and how they are doing it so that we know how to adapt our instruction based on our students' needs and interests. When we evaluate, we are assigning a grade level to work completed by the students to help us when reporting back to parents on their child's progress.

(2017, November 24). Image provided in class.

 The assessment cycle presented in class, the one you can see on the right, explains how expectations drive the tasks given to the students, which drive the assessments, which drive the expectations. Within this cycle, we have the triad of Observation-Conversation-Product, which we have learned about in our other classes. This triad of information supports teachers when it comes time to evaluate students. It provides teachers with a more holistic and accurate understanding of the student's knowledge, so I find it very fitting to be included in this assessment cycle.

Now that we have those little pieces of information, let's get down to what I really want to talk about: portfolio assessment.

As described by Learn Alberta, a portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work samples, student self-assessments and goal statements that reflect student progress. In mathematics, portfolios are excellent assessment tools because they allow students to see their academic progress and mathematics is a very progressive subject. That means, that what one learns early on establishes the foundation on which students will build their future math knowledge. They are constantly reviewing skills and learning new ones to develop the previously mastered skills, and a portfolio shows proof of that.

Portfolios allow teachers to conduct a specific type of assessment that we learned about this week; that is, assessment as learning. Assessment as learning allows students to monitor their own learning and get feedback to make changes and adjustments in what they understand.  This type of assessment allows students to reflect more deeply on their strengths and weaknesses in mathematics and thus, allowing students to be in charge of their own learning.

When students are in charge of their own learning, they become more resilient in persevering through challenges. This is a major component of having a growth mindset, which is an important mentality to have especially to succeed in math class. I discussed the importance of having a growth mindset in my Week 2 post Growth vs. Fixed Mindset).

Learn Alberta. (2008, October 1). Effective portfolios [Snapshot].
Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2Am46dC

Therefore, portfolios in math class are important because they:

• are a powerful tool to assess as students learn,
• help students become in charge of their own learning, and
• foster a growth mindset.