{"id":15622,"date":"2022-08-30T11:00:26","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/?post_type=cw_post&p=15622"},"modified":"2022-08-30T12:13:22","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T16:13:22","slug":"proving-your-learning-through-portfolio-presentations","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/proving-your-learning-through-portfolio-presentations\/","title":{"rendered":"Proving Your Learning Through Portfolio Presentations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the school year wrapped up, I had the opportunity to participate in the 10th grade portfolio presentation process at <\/span>Prospect Hill Academy<\/span><\/a> (PHA), a PreK-12 charter school serving over 1100 students on three campuses in Somerville and Cambridge, MA. While PHA does not have a full-fledged competency-based education system, they have always had a strong student-centered lens and standards-based approach to curriculum, instruction, and assessment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The PHA system illustrates two of the elements of the <\/span>competency-based education definition<\/span><\/a>, 1) assessment as a meaningful, positive, and empowering learning experience for students and 2) rigorous, common expectations for learning that include knowledge, skills, and dispositions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"PHA<\/p>\n

Proving Your Learning to Yourself and the Community<\/b><\/h2>\n

In developing its portfolio system, PHA began with 12th grade graduation portfolios and presentations, which are graduation requirements. Ben Spencer, the secondary Humanities coordinator and one of the designers of the PHA portfolio system shared about the origins and purpose of the Graduate Defense:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We were interested in students developing portfolios and doing some sort of defense, mainly because we wanted students to have an opportunity to tell the story of their own learning and own their learning. And when they graduated, be able to speak to the biggest skills, understandings \u2013 both academic understandings and understandings about themselves that they were taking with them so that it wasn\u2019t just \u2018I have accrued enough credits, I passed my classes, but I forget everything I did and I\u2019m done.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In getting started in 2016, they visited other schools and initially designed the graduation portfolio for seniors. A few years after that was established, they added the 8<\/span>th<\/span> and 10th grade portfolios, which function as \u201cgateways\u201d to the next level of learning. The 8th and 10th grade presentations are a smaller, less intense iteration of the senior defense. Students present in small groups with a staff member and students from other grades, typically from the grade below the presenters. Exhibition nights where students present a project to the wider community are also an established feature, including in the earlier grades. Students thus have multiple experiences that support their readiness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A Defined and Supportive Process<\/b><\/h2>\n

I gathered around a table in the modest middle school library with three 10th grade students \u2013 Ana, Marcus, and Luis (note that student names are changed), Spencer, and four 9th grade students. Copies of the <\/span>10th Grade Gateway Roundtable Presentation<\/span><\/i> protocol<\/span><\/a> circulated as Spencer reviewed the process. Each round will go through the following steps:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n