Reading Portfolios Reveal New Dimensions of Students

Abstract

Three years ago, as a language arts teacher on an interdisciplinary team, I began searching for a way to help my middle school students learn about themselves as readers. With much of the emphasis in my state on writing, I also wanted to find a way to a more balanced approach to literacy learning one which included more emphasis on reading, and would help me know each of my 125 students better as individual readers. I had already adapted many of Atwell's (1987) and Riefs (1992) approaches to middle school literacy in my classroom. The room hummed with reading and writing in a workshop environment and minilessons devoted to writing strategy instruction were part of the daily routine. Pan of our week was designated for independent reading workshop time, and my students were reading books of their own choice and responding in journals. We created a classroom library and participated in large and small group book discussions. Time, response, and ownership, three elements recommended for developing middle school reading and writing (Atwell, 1987), served as the framework of my middle school language arts classroom. Still, I had questions. With state-mandated writing portfolios and school-wide writing folders from previous classes, I could readily observe the students' abilities and interests in writing, but not in reading. What did Sarah know about herself as a reader and how was that impor tant? What types of reading materials would motivate Daniel to read? How did Stefano think his English read ing ability was progressing? I knew bits and pieces of this information, especially for my avid readers; but about many of my students, the passive majority, I knew very little. I needed to find a way to tap their interests, atti tudes, and levels of motivation to read. More important ly, I felt my middle school students needed to under stand themselves as readers. I wanted them to explore their own reading habits and abilities. Although discussing each students' habits individu ally would be ideal, finding the time for 125 in-depth interviews in the reality of the middle school day was not practical or possible. Administering reading interest inventories and formal attitude measures would yield some information, but authentic reflection would be lost. Requiring students to demonstrate all their learning in writing, while certainly desirable, would not be fair to those with other interests and abilities. Because portfo lios can be used for varying puiposes, it occurred to me that a reading portfolio might be the answer to my dilemma. As I searched for information to guide the portfolio creation process, I found little information on reading portfolios. Valencia's (1990) discussion of the possibili ties of reading portfolios and Hansen's (1992) work with literacy portfolios were helpful, as was Tierney, Carter, and Desai's (1991) description of portfolio assessment in a reading-writing classroom. However, much of the liter ature on literacy assessment focused on writing rather than on reading (Hiebert & Hutchinson, 1991; Wagner, 1993). I began to develop a design for a portfolio to explore my students' reading. I knew the importance of choice and ownership to middle school students and understood that my students possessed diverse talents and intelligences that extended beyond the verbal-lin guistic (Gardner, 1983). Using suggestions from Collins and Dana (1993), I developed the following guidelines for a reading portfolio: Choose five pieces of evidence to