Five For Friday: Five Types of Portfolios

Five for Friday's are a once weekly link up party with Doodlebugs Teaching and I'm back at em!

I did a tiny bit of research for this one folks and today I'm talking about 5 types of portfolios you might find in a classroom (or you might want to include in your classroom).

1. 

Art Portfolio

Last year I had my students do all their artwork on paper of different sizes and varieties... why?  Because I noticed that from my previous year of teaching a lot of their art ends up in the recycling bin when I hand it back.  To avoid this after their art was taken off the walls I collected it all and put it in a folder in my filing cabinet.  At the end of the year I had them create a book cover for their art portfolio and I gave it to them as one of their end of the year gifts.  To make it more durable I had (most) of their artwork laminated (anything that was really large I didn't laminate and to include it in the book I just folded it in half but made sure to not let the binding catch both sides.. otherwise it wouldn't open!) and then I binded it all together for them.  Now they each have a collection of the artwork they did in grades 5 or 6!

2. 

Brown Paper Bag Portfolio

This is an example of a brown paper bag book... the concept is the same for a portfolio... you'll just probably want to use larger paper bags. I saw this idea in a grade 4 class that I was subbing in the other week...

This one shows the pocket and that this student has started quite the collection in there!

Perhaps not the best photos to get an idea of what I'm talking about but you should definitely check out the links and make this project to suit your needs!

Why do I like these?  I just love the pockets that you can store things in!  One section could be for artwork, another for writing they are proud of, another maybe of photos, things they did well on, etc.

here are some instructions for how to make them:

3. 

Electronic Portfolios

You could get students to make a blog and every time they do something that you want them to include in their portfolio they could take a picture of it or scan it and do a short write up on it. This way parents can easily see what their children are up to.

Kidblog is a good, safe website for students to do this

4. 

Folder Portfolios

I feel like these would be a little too unorganized for me to want to use in my classroom. But I recall using them when I was in elementary school. We made our own out of huge pieces of cardstock like material. We folded them nearly in half and stapled the edges. Then we would randomly put stuff in there throughout the year. You could also use a regular folder and have students put stuff in there... I feel like in either one of these things will likely get crumpled, fall out, and go missing.... not my favourite portfolio option.

5. 

Binder Portfolios

Use a binder. Students can easily take them out and put them on their desk for any parent teacher student conferences that may come up. You can put in some folders into the binder rings to store papers that can't be hole punched (or use page protectors - it's what I use in my professional portfolio). I would definitely include some kind of goal sheets for each term... there could even be one for the teacher to fill out, one for the student to fill out, and one for the parent to fill out. At the next meeting you could go over and review all of the goals.

I'm sure I've left out many kinds of portfolios though... which ones do you find useful in your classroom?