Fostering Metacognition as Differentiation: Keeping Student Portfolios

By: Dr. Hillel Broder
from SAR High School

Categories:
Development of Critical and / or Creative Thinking, Differentiated Instruction

Subject(s) of entry:
Art, Literature, any discipline

Pedagogy:
PBL - project based learning, UBD - understanding by design, 21st Century Skills

Grade(s) to which this was taught:
9-10

Grade(s) for which this will be useful:
K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, Elementary school, Middle school, High school

For the past five years, I have taught at a cloud-based school in which I have built a digital portfolio-driven course for 9th and 10th grade English. This course is premised on periodic self-assessments and benchmarks of portfolio "publishing" at the quarter and semester points. The attached document details the moments of self-assessment, the uses of self-assessment in the school calendar, the uses of self-assessment as a means for formative and summative assessment, and the development of metacognition in each student through the personalized differentiation of goals, challenges, and successes as readers, writers, and students. While used in high school English, this model for cloud-based portfolio keeping works on any level of student production and teacher assessment--from Elementary through High School, and for
any discipline, too.