A portfolio is a meaningful collection of student work that tells the story of student achievement or growth. There are two basic reasons for doing portfolios--assessment or instruction. Benefits for using portfolios in instruction include the development of students self-reflection, critical thinking, responsibility for learning, and content area…

This digest is intended to help and inform those teachers who are contemplating using children's literature to teach reading, and provides a brief review of material in the ERIC database on literature-based reading instruction. The digest includes sections on recent research, basic resources, assessing literature based reading, diverse methods…

Current assessment practices in the classroom can affect the movement toward a child-centered curriculum in mathematics education. The mathematical community is addressing the challenge to implement standards in the areas of testing, assessment, and accountability in order to maintain this movement. This digest: (1) discusses what makes current…

Classroom assessment measures, in the past often limited to multiple-choice and standardized tests, now can involve the creation of portfolios, or collections of pieces of work which the student selects as the best representation of his or her efforts, progress, skills, and accomplishments. Portfolios also usually include teacher evaluations and…