It’s time to think about year-end evaluations, which means it’s time to assemble those portfolios. (Actually, for the first time this year, I have only one portfolio and evaluation to worry about, because Moonheart has opted to use her standardized test scores to satisfy the annual reporting requirement.)
I am not a scrapbooker. So, I see these annual portfolios as not only a record of my children’s academic achievements for the year, but also a keepsake for the future. We always include photos and take pains with the presentation. Normally, I really enjoy this process, but it’s something I’ve been putting off this year. I’m sure it has something to do with the big changes I know are coming in our homeschooling life (more on that in another post), but I know it also has to do with my general tiredness after a challenging educational year with RobotBoy. Nonetheless, I finally got into “the zone” and got it done last week.
In any case, I thought I’d share a little bit about how we assemble these portfolios and what goes in them. It’s something about which many new homeschoolers (and non-homeschooling family and friends) always seem to have lots of questions.
I start by going through the computer files I’ve kept during the year in which I list all the books each child has read and the educational shows they’ve watched, outside classes they’ve taken, field trips we’ve done, hands-on projects they’ve completed, etc. Then, I start sifting and teasing out that information into a “course description” for each subject. I cut and paste and type information until I have one or two pages for each subject listing all the resources used and experiences had by each child that year.
Then, I sit down, usually on the living room floor, with a big stack of each student’s workbooks and texts and the three-ring binders in which we file all the year’s loose papers. I grab a pad of sticky notes and start paging through each book, tagging all the pages I think might make good samples of the year’s work for that subject. I aim for three samples from each resource: one from the beginning of the year, one from the middle and one from the end. Sometimes, if the material itself is just not terrible exciting or we used lots of different resources for the same subject, I’ll settle for just two. And, occasionally, I can’t resist putting in more. But three is my rule of thumb.
I’m slightly obsessive about this process. So, my next step is to hit the copy center and make photocopies of all the pages I want to include in the portfolio. That way, I can use the copies of the workbook pages and leave the actual workbooks intact. (When the shelves get too full, I pack them in boxes labeled with the year and store them in the garage. Why? I’m not sure, except that I can’t bring myself to throw them away. And I’ve had one or two times when it turned out to be useful to be able to go dig them up.) For the loose-leaf pages in that year’s binder, I transfer the original to the portfolio and put the photocopy in its place. (Again, I hear you ask, “Why?” And, again, I say, “Because I like to keep things ‘complete.’”)
Then I get to the fun part: Photos. One of the best purchases we’ve made was the digital camera. I absolutely love the fact that I can take as many pictures as I want, download them to my computer, store them more or less forever, print them on demand, and never waste time or money on film. I take lots and lots of pictures during the year of the kids doing “educational” things. I take pictures of them doing history-related craft projects and taking field trips and doing science labs and at their outside activities . . . Some years, I even make up little yearbooks for them. Other years, like this one, I just include several pages of photos in the portfolio. I usually spend at least a day or two reviewing the archives, choosing and cropping photos and arranging them on pages and printing them.
I had finished all those steps by the end of last week, and I spent Saturday evening while RobotBoy was watching a movie with his dad actually assembling the portfolio. So, without further ado, here are the contents of this year’s portfolio:
Math
Florida Virtual School Course Description
Grade Report: First Semester
Grade Report: Second Semester
Sample Assignment Page
Sample Project Page
Language Arts
Resources and Reading List
Spelling and Grammar Worksheets
Copywork and Handwriting Practice Sheets
History: The Middle Ages and Renaissance
Resources and Reading List
Reports and Worksheets
Photos: History Projects
Photos: Renaissance Faire Field Trip
Science
Resources and Reading List
Outline Worksheets
Photos: Chemistry Labs
World Geography
Resources and Reading List
Geography Worksheets
Historical Maps
Foreign Language
Resources List
Latin for Children Worksheets
Minimus Worksheets
Arts & Extracurriculars
Activities List
Photos: Ballet Productions
Photos: Church Holiday Pageant
Photos: Drama Class Production
Photos: Annual Kid-run Service at Church
Attendance Certificate, Religious Education Program
Photos: Model Rocketry Club
That’s it.
So, I have to say that I still have very mixed feelings about this past year. Seeing the assembled portfolio—with its pretty colored plastic subject dividers and its neatly typed lists of resources and reading materials and the photos of RobotBoy looking happy doing interesting things—did help me to realize that the year was more productive than I feared. And there were definite bright spots: I was delighted, for example, to see just how many books RobotBoy read for pleasure this year. However, the truth is that it was a lot harder to cull through the piles of work and find a few really nice samples for each subject than it has been in previous years.
All in all, I’m very glad to be done and to have come out with a respectable finished product. But I’m even more glad that I’ve already started looking ahead to next year and identified some things to do differently.
Next time, I’ll start posting details about those plans . . .
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