Homeschooling Portfolios and Assessments: How to Make One and What 9 Items It Can Include

Many states allow a certified teacher to review a portfolio of your child’s work at the end of the year. The teacher indicates that your child is on grade level and that their home school year can be considered completed. Putting together folders of homeschooling work can be an intimidating thought even for someone who has done it before. It can really be a pretty simple process if you know what to include.

I keep my children’s work in a folder on my shelf and add it several times a week. When they have finished a book or written a story or picture, I just put it back in the folder. I try to make sure I put a date on every piece of paper that I put in the folder. I don’t have to organize or fix it until the end of the school year. Right before meeting with the teacher at the end of the year, I pull out the folder of collected items and make piles by topic. Then I organize each stack by date. Some people like to make a fancy scrapbook for their portfolio. I just prefer to do stacks per topic. You could put each topic in a good notebook, but for the most part, this is not necessary.

Here are some items you may want to include in your homeschooling portfolio:

1. Reading lists

2. Daily or weekly logs that your child has completed.

3. Tickets or event programs you have attended.

4. Test results if your child took a standardized test of some kind.

5. Attendance records if your state requires them.

6. Photos or videos of projects your child completed throughout the year.

7. Artwork: If you put dates on your child’s papers, it is fun to see a picture of the beginning of the year and compare it to a picture of the end of the year.

8. Any writing your child has made. This can include poetry, magazines, short stories, essays, research papers, or any other writing they have done. Again, comparing a piece from the beginning of the year to one from the end of the year can be quite rewarding.

9. Workbooks that have been used during the last year.

Preparing a homeschool portfolio doesn’t have to be a hassle. If you have a place to collect your child’s work throughout the year, then putting together a portfolio can be fun. You can remember all the activities you have done and marvel at your child’s progress throughout the year.