3 Ways to Ensure Your Student Portfolios Are Talked about for Years to Come
Your student portfolios can be a means to share with parents or they can be a way to wow your parents. And when you wow your parents instead of merely sharing with them, that is where the added sales, referrals, and profit come in for your Early Childhood business.
Portfolios are a great way to demonstrate student progress over time in your classroom. They can be used as tools to demonstrate each child’s individual progress from the beginning to the end of the school year.
When used correctly, portfolios can be powerful tools to support a child's development. Today we are talking specifically about the year-end portfolios. These usually highlight all of the wonderful success happening throughout the year and can also serve as a valuable communication tool about the purposeful learning fun that happened all year long.
So, what can you do to ensure that your team is creating student portfolios that wow your parents and are talked about for years to come?
That is what we are talking about today. 3 Ways to Ensure Your Student Portfolios Are Talked about for Years to Come:
Create a simplified system your team will use.
Personalize and customize.
Highlight skill development and growth.
Create a Good System Your Team Will Use
Having a great system in place to stay organized will allow your teacher to focus on the content of the portfolios. And make sure that whoever is in the classroom can be working towards creating a fabulous year-end portfolio.
There are a few things to keep in mind as you begin to create your own system.
First, consider what type of information you would like to include. A good portfolio will document a child's progress across a variety of domains, such as cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development. You will also want to make sure that you are including a variety of artifacts, such as pictures, artwork, and writings.
Second, think about how you will organize the year-end portfolio. A good way to do this is to create categories based on the types of information you would like to include. For example, you might have a section for cognitive development, a section for social-emotional development, and a section for physical development. Within each of these sections, you can then further organize the information by date or by theme.
Third, consider how you will use the portfolio. Will you share it with other professionals? Will you use it to track your child's progress over time? Knowing how you will use the portfolio will help you determine what information to include and how to organize it. Like the example I just shared, she uses it for more of a memory keepsake and has a separate process for skill development.
And finally, decide how you will store your student’s work samples. Will you use a file crate with hanging file folders? A filing cabinet? Binders? A journal? Something else? A file crate with hanging file folders works well because the crates are inexpensive and don’t take up too much space. Binders can also be very effective for portfolio storage, but they’re costly and can take up a lot of space, especially if you have a lot of students. Our example used simple 5x7 blank journals.
Personalize + Customize
The second way to ensure your student year-end portfolios wow your parents is to personalize and customize them. This is also where those parent volunteers we talked about in last week’s ECBME episode come in super handy.
Include pictures of the children individually, but also include group shots that the children really love. Think of your student’s year-end portfolio as a memoir, a snapshot of their life at that moment. Add in a handprint at the start of the school year and one at the end so the children can see how they have physically grown.
You can also ask them what they would like to include. When they are part of the process they will be excited to take ownership of what to highlight and share. These are the authentic assessments that occur during learning and playing.
Portfolio Covers with self-portraits are another way to personalize the portfolios. Inviting students to draw a self-portrait each month is a great way to keep track of their progress.
Highlight skill development and growth.
What skills you’re going to track in your portfolios or can you highlight them based on the system you want to use? Here are just some of the sections you may want to consider including in your year-end portfolios that can highlight skill development and growth:
Anecdotal Notes
Writing Samples
Photographs
Self-Portraits
Fine Motor Skills
Math Skills
Literacy Skills
Science
Art
Here’s a great idea for taking notes that’s quick and easy! Keep sticky notes handy and jot down notes quickly whenever you notice something noteworthy. Once a week, go through the sticky notes on your clipboard and place them in each child’s individual portfolio. To keep it even more simplified, create a section in each child’s portfolio that is called TAKE NOTE. Then you can literally just put in the sticky notes and not have to take the time to transpose them. Super handy when you are short on team members and time.
Final Thoughts on Year-End Student Portfolio
Year end student portfolios are a great way to demonstrate student progress over time in the classroom. They can be used as tools to demonstrate each child’s individual progress from the beginning to the end of the school year.
They are also a great way to add tremendous value that creates an experience parents cannot wait to share. This sharing and value translates into increased engagement, relationship building, and enrollment. Portfolios can seem overwhelming and difficult to manage but they don’t have to be. Create a simple system you know your team will follow and get them wowing your parents every year!
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