Homeschool Portfolios and Assessments: How to Make One and What 9 Items It Can Include
Many states allow a certified teacher to review a portfolio of your child’s work at the end of the year. The teacher signs that her son is on grade level and that his year of homeschooling can be considered complete. Putting together homeschool portfolios can be a daunting thought even for someone who has done it before. It can actually be a pretty simple process if you know what to include.
I collect my children’s work in a folder on my bookshelf and add to it several times a week. When they have completed a book or written a story or a picture, I just put it in the folder. I try to make sure I put a date on every piece of paper I put in the folder. I don’t have to organize or fix it until the end of the school year. Right before I meet with the teacher at the end of the year, I pull out the collected items folder and make piles by subject. I then organize each stack by date. Some people like to make a fancy scrapbook for their portfolio. I just prefer to do stacks by theme. You could put each topic in a nice notebook, but for the most part, this isn’t necessary.
Here are some items you might want to include in your homeschool portfolio:
1. Reading lists
2. Daily or weekly logs that your child has completed.
3. Tickets or programs of events you have attended.
4. Test results if your child took any type of standardized test.
5. Attendance records if your state requires them.
6. Pictures or videos of projects your child completed over the course of the year.
7. Artwork: If you put dates on your child’s papers, it’s fun to look at a picture from the beginning of the year and compare it to a picture from the end of the year.
8. Any writing your child has done. This can include poetry, diaries, stories, essays, research papers, or any other writing they have done. Once again, comparing a piece from the beginning of the year with one from the end of the year can be very rewarding.
9. Workbooks that have been used within the last year.
Preparing a homeschool portfolio doesn’t have to be a chore. If you have a place to collect your child’s work throughout the year, putting together a portfolio can be really fun. You can look back on all the activities you have done and marvel at your child’s progress throughout the year.