Assessment for Learning

It is mid year - the time when teachers across the country gather information on students to report mid year results to all interested parties. This can take many forms, from parent-teacher interviews, reports, portfolios, 3-way interviews, student led conferences and more. Each school has ownership of how and when they feel it necessary to report, within the Ministry of Education guidelines.

Picture thanks to Hedrick on Flickr

In our school the reporting schedule is varied. We predominantly have AFL folders (assessment for learning folders/portfolios) along with  3way interviews term 2, and student led conferences term 4. We like to promote the child as being at the centre of their own learning, so they have a large part to play in reporting their progress, but this is not always easy.

With the introduction of e-portfolios in recent years I have found it more difficult to achieve a portfolio for learning instead of a portfolio of learning.

AFL folders serve a purpose, they replaced the written report, that would have originally discussed what a student could do and needed to work on in each curriculum area. AFL folders instead include test results, and progress graphs, along with students work samples and self reflections against learning criteria. Each year the AFL folder changes slightly one way or the other, and often discussion centres around what is the best way to balance the accountability of the reporting levels to parents, and the child ownership of learning artefacts.

With the introduction of E-portfolios this hasn't become any clearer, as we struggle to develop authentic ways to share students learning and progress digitally, while maintaining a certain level of consistency between paper afl and online e-portfolio, as well as reporting specific data to parents.

How do we find the happy medium between an assessment portfolio and a showcase portfolio, In both paper or online portfolios?