Week 5 – Discussion 2

Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Settings icon above for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.

 Portfolios 

For your final project this week, you will be developing a portfolio. In order to help you better understand the purpose of your assignment, we want to take a deeper look into the use of portfolios as an assessment tool. Chapter 6 of the course text discusses how portfolios are used to develop a holistic picture of a child’s abilities by providing a framework to gather and evaluate artifacts (Howard, V. F., & Aiken, E., 2015).As a professional working with children, your role in portfolio assessment is a vital one. For this discussion, we will focus on the importance of portfolio assessment in the classroom or childcare center.

• Discuss how portfolio assessments support you as a professional in your quest to ensure the growth of the children with whom you work. Make sure to include specific examples of the purposes of portfolios to support your thinking.
• Explain how you will manage the logistical piece of using portfolio assessments. Reference section 6.2 Portfolio Logistics from the course text to support your explanation.
• Describe the different types of evidence that are included in portfolios. Make sure to explain the role the children will play in this piece of the portfolio process.
• Discuss how you will include families in the portfolio assessment process, and why this important to the portfolio process
• Explain how the portfolio process you will use with children mirrors the portfolio you are creating for your final project in this course.

Guided Response: Review several of your peers’ responses. Respond to at least two of your peers and share one new take-away you had about portfolios from reading their response. In addition, discuss at least two additional types of evidence they may want to include in their portfolios and explain why.

Though to replies is the basic expectation, for deeper engagement and learning you are encouraged to provide responses to any comments or questions others have given to you. Remember, continuing to engage with peers and the instructor will further the conversation and provide you with opportunities to demonstrate your content expertise, critical thinking, and real-world experiences with this topic.