Organizing Children’s Portfolios

1/25/2017

We are on week 3 organizing children’s portfolios of the 2017 Classroom Organization Challenge Series. Janice from Prek Partner and Kate from ECSE Fun has joined me to bring you our organizational tips and tricks.

As a preschool teacher, we document and record children’s development throughout the year to gain valuable insight into each individual child’s interests and strengths.

This process can be daunting if you do not have a process to collect all of that needed information.

If you have been following me for a while, then you know that I use the learning genie to collect all my information with. This system does allow me to print a portfolio of all their work that has been inputted into the system. However, it's a digital printed portfolio.

With that being said, I still like to collect sample work for each individual child and compile it into a preschool memory book. I feel there is nothing like being able to thumb through your child’s accrual work, being able to touch and see the process that your child went through to create it.

Here is the system that we use to collect information for both the learning genie and the end of the year writing and art memory book.

Everything thing start at my Teacher Command Center.

At the bottom of my command center I have two baskets that holds information that needs to be either inputted into the learning genie or put into the art portfolios.

Thanks to our baskets we know what needs to be filled into art portfolios. Each basket also has color group tags, this allows us to know what group of children’s work samples need to be filled.

When the baskets get full it is time to pull out the portfolio cart. This cart has everything we need on it to put together children’s art portfolios. The cart allows us to work on the portfolios anywhere in the classroom, depending on the time of the day.

On the top of the cart is a tray of all the needed tools to put together portfolios.

On the bottom is a rack of colored construction paper, so that if a sample is to small we can attach it to a sheet of construction paper before putting into our art portfolios.

Child portfolios are organized by color groups. This helps us to find who we are looking for in a snap.

Children’s art portfolios are placed in a half of a file folder with fasteners. So, that means children’s work samples from the beginning of the year will be on the bottom and most current to the top. At the end of the year children will create their own covers for their art portfolio.

Week 3 Digital Life Check List

Print out the portfolio checklist to help you stay on top of the organization process.

I have broken it down into small steps each day to get you the result with little frustration.

Don’t forget to share your progress with us on Instagram. The challenge hashtag is #2017tptprekchallenge or you can tag us so that we can follow along and give encouragement along the way.
@teachingpreschoolers
@prekpartner
@funinecse
We will also be sharing on Facebook so join the conversation and share your progress along the way.