Focused Portfolios

A Complete Assessment for the Young Child

Gaye Gronlund

• Publisher: Redleaf Press
• ISBN:
  9781605546759
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

• Over 21,000 copies of the first edition sold. Focused Portfolios is widely course adopted.
  The new edition reflects current best practices in observation and assessment using portfolios.
  Includes information on apps and other digital tools to create portfolios for individual assessment and parent engagement.
  Contains updated developmental milestones.
  Focuses on five domains: physical/motor, social/emotional, language, cognition, and newly added approaches to learning.
  This book can be used for both center-based child care and family child care portfolios.
  Covers documenting developmental milestones for children from birth through age 5.
  Includes using individual state standards to develop portfolios that reflect the child's performance.

Chapter 1

The Focused Portfolios Process

A portfolio is one way to document or keep track of a child’s ongoing development. It is more than a checklist, scrapbook, or photo album. By saving samples of a child’s work and writing anecdotes about his interactions, a teacher puts together evidence of a child’s learning and accomplishments.

Portfolios are well accepted as a type of authentic assessment. Authentic assessment means evaluating children’s growth through their daily activities, instead of using something that is not part of their regular routine, such as standardized tests. Teachers choose authentic assessment because they believe that everyday experiences most accurately show what children have learned and the progress they have made.

We have found that many teachers are interested in using portfolios but find the process overwhelming and time-consuming. We designed the Focused Portfolios process with that concern in mind. It offers teachers of children from birth to age five a planned and organized format that is easy to fit into a busy day.

From working with many early childhood teachers, we know that your job is already demanding. You’re on your feet long hours. You’re attentive to the children on a nonstop basis. Your daily task list is lengthy and time-consuming. The Focused Portfolios process is designed to be woven into your daily routines with children to help you evaluate, celebrate, and enjoy children’s development.

What Is the Focused Portfolios Process?

The Focused Portfolios process is a framework for creating early childhood portfolios. It offers structure and guidance for teachers who are ready to plan and implement authentic assessment within developmentally appropriate programs.

A portfolio that is put together using this process is a planned collection of documentation about a child. Documentation is evidence of a child’s experience and includes photos of the child in action, or work samples that the child produced. To go along with each photo and work sample, the teacher writes an anecdote—a note describing what was happening with the child at the time the photo was taken or the work sample was made.

The Focused Portfolios process is not a blueprint for compiling a scrapbook or a photo album, nor does it limit the scope of a portfolio to a random collection of artwork and writing samples.

Teachers collect specific pieces of documentation over several months. Two or three times a year, they pull together what they have collected and prepare a Teacher and Family Reflection Form and a Family-Teacher Summary Report in order to evaluate the child’s accomplishments and progress. Or they may turn back to the reporting format they use with the research-based assessment system they use. Their task is to evaluate the child’s accomplishments and progress and prepare to share both the report and the portfolio with the child’s family. The portfolio provides evidence of any conclusions drawn about the child’s development and helps both teachers and family members conference to set goals and make plans to support each child’s growth both at home and in the early childhood program setting.

Using the Focused Portfolios process, teachers collect documentation in four categories: favorites, friends, family, and developmental information. These four categories show teachers and family members what children’s interests and strengths are. Documenting accepted developmental information helps teachers and families look at children’s performance in relation to age-appropriate expectations. The framework is the same for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

There are many excellent charts and checklists of developmental information and widely held expectations for young children. In addition, each state in the United States has published early learning standards for preschoolers, and most have some form of guidelines for infants and toddlers. We recognize that many programs refer to their state guidelines in planning curriculum and conducting assessment processes. We also recognize that there are commercially developed, research-based assessment tools that are used by many early childhood educators. Most of these tools have been correlated to state standards and guidelines. The Focused Portfolios process can be used no matter what source of developmental information an educator uses. The process can also be added when an educator is using a commercial, research-based assessment tool. As you will see throughout this book, the Focused Portfolios approach is a way of organizing developmental information so that families can see a clear picture of their child’s accomplishments, capabilities, and progress. It also guides teachers in individualized curricular planning.

Because of the many choices of developmental information available to early educators today, this second edition of this book will not include any developmental milestone charts. Instead the many examples that are included in this book will draw from different early learning standards and guidelines from around the United States. In this way, the readers can see how they can draw from the source of developmental information that is best suited for their program and the children with whom they work.

There are some important considerations when determining which source of developmental information to use:

• The sources should be well-grounded in the recommendations set forth in developmentally appropriate practices for the field of early childhood education.

• The sources should be readily available and familiar to many practitioners.

• The information in these sources should apply to the age range from birth to age five (infants, toddlers, and preschoolers).

• The information should be applicable to both typically developing children as well as those with identified special needs.

How to Collect Documentation

Documentation is made up of four parts:

1. Observing a child or a group of children

2. Writing down what you see and hear: the anecdote

3. If appropriate, taking a photo or selecting a child’s work sample

4. Putting the anecdote and photo or work sample together on the collection forms

Specially designed collection forms for documenting children’s favorites, friends, family, and developmental information are included in this book and are available online as editable PDFs at www.redleafpress.org/focusedportfolios. The forms can also be used for documenting progress toward goals for young children with identified special needs (Individual Family Service Plan [IFSP] and Individual Education Plan [IEP] goals). Chapters 2 and 4 give you specific information about how to collect work samples and photographs and write anecdotes on these forms. These chapters also have many examples of completed documentation to guide you. In addition, two sample collections for two different children are included in chapters 3 and 6.

For infants and toddlers, photographs accompanied by teacher-written anecdotes or stand-alone anecdotes will be most common. Infants and toddlers just don’t produce much on paper because they’re too busy exploring the world around them. It would be inappropriate to expect otherwise or to interfere with what they do naturally. Photos and anecdotes are the best way to capture their learning as it unfolds.

Because preschoolers are able to represent more of their learning and knowledge, paintings, drawings, and writing samples will also be included.

For both age groups, teachers write detailed descriptions of children’s activities and direct quotes of their oral language. These “stand-alone anecdotes” are also effective and powerful forms of documentation.

Even though the format for this type of portfolio is the same for all children, the pieces of documentation collected will be different for each child. No two portfolios will look exactly the same. Each will tell a distinctive story and include the unique ways in which children show their accomplishments, interests, and personalities. The information gathered in the portfolio will be used to assist teachers in planning individualized curricular strategies that build on each child’s interests and strengths and address the areas that are more challenging for them. If your program uses an app to record children’s daily food intake, diapering or toileting information, and naps, you can use the Focused Portfolio process to give further information to families about their child’s development. Additionally, apps that are used to track the development of the children can be used in combination with the Focused Portfolio process. For example, teachers may find it useful to print out and give families a form to fill out rather than asking them to electronically submit information. The teacher can also use the developmental information from the app to help create the child’s portfolio.

The chapters that follow will help you become competent at observing and writing anecdotes, taking informative photos, effectively sharing with families, and using the information collected to plan accordingly. We’ve also included suggestions for addressing progress and making changes in second and subsequent collections.

We have worked with many teachers who are implementing this assessment process. Throughout the book we include their stories and suggestions to help you learn the Focused Portfolios process. We also recognize that, like children, adults have their own pace of absorbing new ideas and information. Therefore, we have separated out some suggestions as “Ideas for Experienced Users” and invite you to make use of these when you feel ready to go beyond the basics.

Getting Started

Planning is the key to ensuring that observing and recording become regular parts of your routine. If you are well prepared, then collecting documentation will be smooth and hassle-free. Here are basic steps for gathering the necessary materials and getting started with the Focused Portfolios process.

Steps	Recommendations
1. Choose a method for writing and storing anecdotes and work samples and downloading photos. To record anecdotes, you may choose to work with paper and pen or with handheld electronic devices, such as tablets and smartphones (depending on your program’s policies). We recognize that there are many applications and programs that use technology to help with the observation and documentation process.	Set up a file folder or three-ring binder for each child (for photos and anecdotes), labeled with the child’s name, or set up a file electronically for each child. Because preschoolers and older toddlers produce work samples (such as large paintings), you may also want a hanging file, cardboard box, plastic crate, or pizza box for each child in which to store those samples. Or you may prefer to take a photograph of the children’s work samples and enter the photo into their electronic portfolio file.
2. Determine whether you will put the collected items in file folders or enter or scan them electronically.	If using actual file folders for the portfolios, they should be kept in an out-of-the-way place so that they will be safe and ready to share with family members (for example, a file or desk drawer, a magazine library case, or a plastic milk crate). If you are using an app or computer program to keep the children’s information, you may be able to share these files with families electronically. Such features will vary, so be sure to read about an app before you begin using it.
3. Decide on the number of times during the year you will meet with families to share the portfolios.	If the children attend your program for a nine- or ten-month session, collecting two sets of items and meeting twice with families is sufficient to ...