Portfolios: Assessment is NOT just about tests...

Last Friday, I attended and presented at Universidad Alberto Hurtado for TESOL Chile. The topic: "Hands-on Classroom Assessment".
At first, I was nervous because I've been wanting to present ever since I started to study English Teaching in 2006. I've been to roughly 10 seminars and conferences and I've felt a lot better than the school itself. I've learned a lot more than at University.
My topic was related to portfolios and how we, teachers, can effectively implement it in order to have a significant progress on students' performance. The first step is to have them aware about the individual items they have to include and that they are going TO CHOOSE their best work.

IT'S NOT ABOUT A FOLDER FULL OF WORKSHEETS!!!!

They will include class work, audio and video tapes, reflections, peer and self evaluation and the corresponding checklists and the analysis of those artifacts.
I prepared a series of forms for both students and teachers to make the use of portfolios reliable, practical, valid, etc. For teachers, there are rubris that measure not only items but overall effort; so students must be also creative and thoughtful.


Here is the link of my materials if you are interested in using them:


http://es.scribd.com/doc/73023247/Instruments-for-Portfolio



Finally, I'd like to state that this type of assessing students is the most succesful tool I have used before and the results were always improving; therefore, I encourage you to do the same :)
Here is the video of my presentation.

ENJOY!!!