29 e.
Portfolio links the students, the teacher, parents, community and peers. Portfolio also shows students’ uniqueness.
f. The last one is evaluating. Portfolio serves as a tool to evaluate students’
achievement. However, portfolio can be a very busy work which perhaps burdening for
both teachers and students if it is not well-designed. Therefore, Brown 2004: 257-259 offers some principles for designing portfolio assessment.
a. State the objective clearly
As mentioned above, before designing the portfolio and before the students composing their portfolio task, the teacher and the students need to be
clear about the objective of the portfolio assessment. The objective is derived from CRADLE. Take one or more points. Tell the students how the portfolio
will be meaningful in their learning. The objective of using portfolio assessment in this study is to note the students’ improvement. Therefore, taking the objectives
from CRADLE, the portfolio assessment will be used as a tool for assessing and reflecting.
b. Give guidelines on what materials to include
What to include depends on the objectives. After determining the objectives, the teacher should tell the students what types of works to include.
There is no limit on what to include on portfolio. Realistically, the teacher has to decide what type of works to include. However, the teacher may discuss this with
the students. The most common type of works to include is, of course, students’
30 writing products. In addition, Weigle 2009: 215 mentions reflective essays as
additional documents. Reflective essays contain stu dents’ self-assessment of their
writing strategies, their strengths and weaknesses in writing. These essays will tell the teacher about what the students have learnt.
c. Communicate assessment criteria to students
The students must be clear about what the teacher expects of them. It means that students’ self-assessment should be incorporated with the criteria of
the teacher’s assessment. The criteria of the teacher’s assessment may derive from students’ self-assessment. The teacher should make the self-assessment as simple
as possible for the students. Such kind of assessment provides feed-back from the teacher to students.
The teacher should be able to make sure that every student receives equal attention from the teacher. Besides from the teacher, valuable feed-back can be
from peers. I also design a teacher assessment rubric. A rubric is a tool which provides
some clarity and consistency to the evaluation of the portfolio. The rubric is on page 30.
d. Designate time within the curriculum for portfolio development
