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Preschool and Kindergarten
AS A KINDERGARTEN TEACHER, I felt there was never enough time in the school day to accomplish everything I wanted to. There was so much for the children and me to explore, to learn, and to share that it was hard having to stop and assess their learning with the standardized assessments that my district expected me to administer. Portfolio assessment was different, however. The portfolios told the story of all that we had done over the year, they were a source of pride for me and the children, and perhaps most importantly, these assessments seemed to extend the children's learning rather than interrupt it. Years later, as a professor of education who teaches courses in cognition and learning, I have a better understanding of why portfolio assessment felt right to me as a teacher. Portfolio assessment not only documents learning but also can help children in preschool, kindergarten, and the primary grades develop a critical tool for learning-their own metacognition.
Benefits of portfolio assessment
Portfolios are systematic collections of children's work, artifacts, and teachers' notes that capture children's learning over time. Portfolio assessment offers an authentic approach to assessment that is developmentally appropriate (Seitz & Bartholomew 2008; Harris 2009). Like other forms of assessment, portfolio assessment gives teachers information about how to adjust their teaching and about the kinds of experiences that might be most helpful to individual children. Unlike standardized assessments, portfolio assessment allows multiple opportunities and ways for children to demonstrate their understanding of concepts and ideas. Another advantage of portfolio assessment over standardized assessments is that they can communicate progress and learning in ways that are easier for families to understand (Geifer 1994). Portfolios provide evidence of progress that is more apparent and often more meaningful to parents than a percentile score on a test. For example, portfolios can easily show improvements in children's writing skills from October to May.
From my experience, the most important benefit of portfolio assessment is that it provides children an opportunity for self-assessment. If children are included in the selection of their portfolio pieces, they can review their work, talk about their thinking process that occurred during the work, discuss their interests and habits, and make choices about which pieces to...
