Christensen: Chapter #7
PORTFOLIOS

There have been many times where I sit and think of sctivites and strategies to use in my future classroom, and portfolios were always a part of the thought process. I only thought it was a good way to keep up on the students work and teach them organizational skills, as well as, responsibility for keeping their work. However, reading Chirstensen chapter I have realized that one portfolio can be used in many different ways when used as an evaluation tool.

Christensen explains that each student keeps every written assignment, good or bad, in the portfolio, and at the end of the year they are to evaluate and analize their progression. I really enjoy this technique because it is during their evaluation that the student recognizes thier strengths, weaknesses, and most importantly their own individual writing style. All three: strengths, weaknessesm and individual writing styles, are great stepping stones in the progress process of a students writing.

One more positive reflection from this chapter is in doing this analyizing of your own work, students will have evidence right in front of them showing the reasoning of why they had to do what they had to do. Professors have stressed that you have to know why you making students do something, and that they have always said that at lease one student will ask "why do we have to do this, it isn't like we are going to use this again?" I think when students will look at the progress and write and evaluation the student will learn the answer to that question, and become a better writer because of it.