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Digital Portfolios

Disrupting the Point-mongering Paradigm

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Who Are We?

  • Garmisch Elementary Middle School (GEMS) Math Team
  • Eric Jones
    • Math 7/Algebra/ET
  • Gwen Willard
    • Math 6/Math7/Math 8/Elementary AAPS

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The Pointmongering Paradigm

  • “Is this for a grade?”
  • “How many points is this worth?”

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  • “Can I do some extra credit?”
  • “Can I still turn this in?” [holding up a wrinkly 4-week-old worksheet hastily copied from a friend on the last day of the quarter.]

Do I have to do this?

How can I raise my grade?

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The Pointmongering Paradigm

They’re not asking…

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  • What am I supposed to be learning?
  • What have I learned? What am I still learning?
  • How can I learn better?
  • How can I best show my learning?
  • What is it that I care about learning?

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It’s Not the Kids’ Fault

“Grades tend to diminish students’ interest in whatever they’re learning…As far as I can tell…every study that has ever investigated the impact of intrinsic motivation of receiving grades has found a negative effect”. ��-Alfie Kohn�

Dr. Ellis Page

Constructive Feedback = GROWTH

Grades = NO GROWTH—even undermining feedback

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What We Hope to inspire:

  • Students who…
    • Take ownership of their own learning
    • Believe they can learn
    • Proactively seek out help from their peers
    • Reflect on what they are good at, and where they can improve
    • Are collaborators, not competitors
    • Are intrinsically motivated

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Portfolios

“Portfolio-based assessment centers on student-learning and intrinsic motivation.”

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–Peter Liljedahl, Building Thinking Classrooms.

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How It Works (for us)

  • Students receive a pre-built google slide deck with:
    • One slide per objective (~5 per quarter. Content & practice standards)
    • Several template slides
  • Students add evidence to portfolios
  • Regular contact with parents
  • Quarterly Conference
    • Strengths/Growth, grades

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What’s Going Well?

  • Student perseverance
  • Collaboration
  • Real focus on SMPs
  • Amazing conversations with students
  • Feedback
  • Differentiation
  • The classroom environment�

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What can be improved?

  • Assessment objectivity
  • (some) Anxious students
  • Varied quality of portfolios

We love the experience that our kids are having every day. They do a lot of math, and seem to actually enjoy it! So we don’t want to give it up; we want to grow/amend it.

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What’s on the Horizon?

  • Student data trackers (content objectives)
  • Evidence-gathering for SMPs
  • Google-Site-based portfolio (instead of slides)
  • Student-driven portfolio goals�

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Questions?