Reflections on Framing Literacy 15,
Reading the section on portfolio development (as reading the other sections)
instill in me the need to accomplish more with portfolios than just grabbing
a few leftover assignments and stuffing them into a folder with their respective
names affixed.
I need to think about portfolio development in which the students retain
ownership over their work. What they work on, what they decide to revise,
what they consider their best work i.e. what they consider adequate for
publishing.
I read and hear about other classrooms which use the writing workshop
/ portfolio and wish those benefits for my students. What has kept me from
implementing it so far breaks down to four issues:
· Planning time sufficient to get two or three weeks planned and
modeled
· The circumstance that takes four of my students away from me
for 2hrs and 15 minutes per day
· The use of Success For All (using up 90 minutes of my classroom
time)
· To a lesser extent concern over classroom management issues when
dealing with a wide open –work on what you want to approach-.
The list of drawbacks is obviously outnumbered by the advantages of keeping
portfolios in a writing workshop format. Good intentions need proper implementation.
I need to work on implementation without selling my entire life over to
the art of teaching.
Justin
