This year our school decided to stop giving out report cards! Sounds crazy right? Well, actually it is a very interesting change in how we assess our own learning, how our teachers assess our learning and how the feedback from these assessments is delivered and shared with our parents and each other. The biggest change has come in the form of a personal student portfolio. At the beginning of this year, every student in Lower School was given a nice, big, red binder. Throughout the year we have been using it to organize and compile work we’ve done that exhibits our growth, our development, our struggles, and our achievements. It’s actually like a living and constantly growing ‘report card’. Inside you’ll find math work, writing examples, art, Chinese studies work, etc. We even include work from P.E. class, Music class and French class. Ms. Cahusac often comments on our work, writes feedback to help us improve and encourages us to stay organized and on track by showing the best ways to file our work and take care of our portfolios.
The best part of the portfolio is that you get to look at all the work you did over the year and it makes you proud plus it looks good in the plastic covers. And you get to bring your work home to your mom and dad instead of having a stack of paper and just recycling it. Its another way for your teacher to help you skip school too.
The bad thing is that it is really hard to organize and if you fall behind you will never catch up. And the portfolios take up a lot of room so half our class is taken over by portfolios. And if your mom and dad find out what you did bad your dead.
In November, during our learning updates and portfolio reviews with our parents and Ms. Cahusac, we established some personal learning goals to work on. My goals were to get better at multiplication,Chinese and participation but Ms Cahusac said I didn’t need to do that so that was the end of that goal. I think planning and working on personal goals is boring and I hate the feeling that I actually have to do it. I’ve been mostly successful in attaining my goals. Well not Chinese but my math is getting better I will never learn how to speak Chinese and as far as I know I don’t really care. This month I’m going to take care of my portfolio I am not sure what I am going to do in I t but I will find out. Soon I’ll have to start thinking about new goals! Things I want to improve on include a bit of multiplication and thats all I can think about now.
Overall, I’m happy that we got portfolios I am also happy we got to change the report card to A,M and E (approaching expectations,meeting expectations and Exceeding expectations.
Thanks for reading