Portfolios In The Preschool Classroom -

Portfolios In The Preschool Classroom

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A portfolio is an amazing tool to show a preschooler’s progress over time and a detailed way to evaluate the child’s progress, assess his or her learning process, and create special activities designed for that child to improve his or her learning process if needed.

A well-done portfolio is also useful during a child’s evaluation and parent conferences because it shows the child’s learning story and can nurture parent engagement in the learning process.

However, portfolios could be time-consuming and overwhelming for teachers if they don’t use a sound system to put them together. This post aims to help you and give you a clear picture of what preschool portfolios are and how to put them together.

I have included a FREE editable printable set at the end of the post as a gift for taking the time to read and to help you get started with portfolios in your classroom.

This printable includes:

Two editable cover pages (color).
One page with four editable spines (color).
Twelve divider pages (color).
One blank and editable divider page (color).
Student Self-Portrait page (color & b/w).
One Anecdotal Note Page (b/w).
One Center Time Notes Page (b/w)
One Assessment Page (b/w).

What is a Preschool Portfolio

A preschool portfolio is a collection of records that tells the story of a child’s learning process related to the learning goals and the program, what makes him or her unique, the progress experienced, and his or her place in the community.

Importance of Preschool Portfolios

Well-done portfolios allow teachers to evaluate each preschooler’s overall performance and identify which areas each child is above expectations in or needs help with. They also encourage preschoolers to reflect on their work, allow parents to see more clearly their child’s overall knowledge, and give the teachers a powerful tool to show parents the actual child’s progress using the child’s work samples and evaluation results during parents’ conferences, and highlight the best traits of each child and their classroom as a whole.

Portfolios also help teachers observe, assess, and address each child’s developmental level in different areas, be more intentional when creating individual lesson plans, and see more clearly what works and what doesn’t in their planned lessons.

Things to Include in a Preschool Portfolio

Before you start collecting what to put in the portfolio, decide how you will store the information. Some choices are:

File crates – these are not expensive and don’t take up much space, but it’s good to add hanging file folders with tabs showing each child’s name.

Manila folders – these are not that practical, in my opinion, because you need something else to store those folders, like a file cabinet or a crate.

Binders – they are a little pricey and take up more space to store, but I particularly love them because you can keep everything secure and easy to look at.

Page Protectors – these aren’t mandatory, of course, but I like to use them for the children’s work. That way, they can flip through their portfolio if they want and look at what’s inside without damaging the contents.

Regardless of your choice, each portfolio should include certain important items to better reflect the child’s learning journey, including any input parents might provide.

Here are some items that, in my opinion, should be included in each preschooler’s portfolio:

Portfolio cover – these are not mandatory, but they make the portfolio look good and professional for parent conferences. The cover should always have the child’s full name, maybe some graphic(s), and even the child’s picture.

Self-Portraits – it is incredible how much a self-portrait says about a child because they tell the story of the child’s fine motor and self-awareness progress. I like to invite the preschoolers to draw a self-portrait every month and write their names on it. This self-portrait should always be dated, adding the first and last name of the child also.

Anecdotal Notes and Observations – these notes are small objective records of the child’s spontaneous and important events, and they should reflect exact details of the situation observed, without any type of personal comments. Take them when the child is playing alone, in small groups, in large groups, and in various circumstances. They should also include the observation date. You can take these notes on sticky notes, on special paper on a clipboard, in a tracking app, or in any other format that works for you. Then transfer them to the child’s portfolio.

Conversations With the Child – one of the most effective ways to gather information is by asking each child open-ended questions such as, “What are you building?”, “Why did you choose red to paint your horse?” “Tell me more about your picture”, because the child’s answer will inform you of the development of his or her expressive language ability, and a clear picture of why that child is behaving the way he or she is doing. A better way to record the child’s answers, besides writing them, is to record a video or audio clip so parents can watch and/or listen in real time during conferences, instead of just reading.

Assessments and/or Screening Tests Results – These types of tests are used to identify the skills and strengths that a child possesses, to find out if the child might be at risk of health, developmental, or social-emotional problems, to recommend an appropriate intervention and/or create individualized activities in all areas of development for each particular child, to ensure his or her success in school and life.

Photographs of Child and Child’s Creations – nothing tells a story better than what you capture in a photo, especially those spontaneous moments when your child is doing something that reflects his or her personality and how his or her learning process is going. Another type of photo is those of the child’s individual or group projects that might not make it to the portfolio. Photographs are incredibly helpful because they show parents what is happening with their children in the classroom; they capture important moments parents don’t get to see and that teachers might miss while completing assessments.

Art, Math, Writing, Tracing, and Cutting Samples – all reflect the child’s progress across domains because teachers and parents can clearly see how the child’s development is progressing. Also, they are a good way to help the child develop his or her language and literacy domains, as well as a thinking process when you involve the child in selecting the pieces he or she wants to include, and allow the teacher to ask questions and record the child’s thoughts and reflections in his or her own words.

Parent Meeting Summaries – these are important, not only to create a record of what teachers discuss with parents but also to collect the information that parents provide about their child (cultural, social, physical, religious, and any other aspect that forms part of the child’s background), that might be relevant to the child’s developmental and social-emotional process.

Using Portfolios to Evaluate Preschoolers’ Development

For a portfolio to evaluate a child’s development effectively, all samples should be dated, organized chronologically, and divided by domains or categories (writing, math, social-emotional, gross motor, etc.).

Once everything is placed in the right spot within the portfolio, the teacher can use it to evaluate the child’s developmental level. This evaluation should show the child’s progress toward the objectives and developmental expectations.

A teacher should never use portfolios to compare one preschooler to another, but rather to evaluate the individual progress of each of them, to have a clear picture of each child’s abilities, strengths, achievements, weaknesses, and needs, as documented by the data that the stored samples provide, and the teacher’s knowledge of the curriculum she or he is using and the stages of development.

Once the teacher gathers the information she needs, she can plan a parent-teacher conference to discuss her findings with the child’s parents, using the portfolio as a tool to show concrete examples of the child’s work.

Conclusion

In a preschool classroom where tests are not appropriate, well-done, organized portfolios allow teachers to focus more effectively on the child’s learning process and strengthen the relationship with the child and his or her parents, expanding the classroom reach and making the teaching-learning process more effective.

Pin It For Later

If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable but want to save it for later, pin it to one of your Pinterest boards so you can access it when you need it.

Editable Portfolio for the Preschool Classroom

I hope this school year, which is just starting, is a successful and happy one for you and your kiddos. Don’t forget to get your printable! Just click the button below to download it and start using it.

Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.

Love,