LING 612 Ch 3 Portfolio Assessment by O'Malley & Pierce (1996)

Chapter three of the O'Malley & Pierce text almost had me thinking that I was going to finally learn how to create and gather information for my assessment portfolio. At this point in the class, I am sold on the type of portfolio I want to create with my students and share the process with the elementary team. Since we already have a portfolio going in writing using the six traits rubric, I thought this would be a great addition using reading to start. I agree with the concept of the student being in charge of their self-assessment and goal setting. I was trying to to figure out how to incorporate the essential elements of the portfolio including samples of student work, student self-assessment and clear stated criteria. In the samples of student work, I want to include how students learn to read and the concepts of print they are applying. I also want to show students their growth over time with their writing. And how they are learning their numbers to apply to addition and subtraction. Maybe this is a huge task, but I remember the whole language approach that we had our content curriculum in the early 1990's. I was told to use portfolios but I never got the training that I needed to get started, so all the work I included in the portfolio folder was work that I thought were showing growth over time in writing and math. I still do not think that is the process to learn how to create and develop authentic assessment and portfolios can be done by given samples and ideas, rather it should be a staff development idea that we need to be trained on and see the process from start to finish, perferably an end product that we can show our students and jump right into teaching and developing the process for incorporating porfolios as a part of the classroom routine.
At this point I am processing how students select their work. There are three kinds of self-assessment which include documentation which contains their best work, comparision which they look at their work and compare it with work done in the past, and integration which showcases their growth in oral and written language.
In the section where the student and teacher works on clearly stated criteria, I am not able to see how my Kindergarten students can come up with goals to set for themselves and how it would be incorporated in my classroom (pg. 36). I have learned the hard way not to jump into new material without getting training on how to use an assessment tool in my classroom. I am not hestitant to learn new things, but I am hestitant to waste my time and confuse my students while I am trying to figure out how to use resources that are manditory or required but forgetting to give me mini lessons on how to develop a resource.
I am having high hopes that I will learn how to create an authentic assessment that includes assessment porfolios and I can use the resource and help the rest of the teachers in my site use this assessment tool. I am especially interested in creating authentic assessment in oral and written language and find ways to include it without spending endless hours trying to figure out the process on my own, without knowing what I am trying to gain in the process.