Writing Portfolio/End of Year Writing Ideas Linky Party

March 7, 2012

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how to organize my students writing for the end of the year. When I taught first grade and last year, we glued all the students writing to 10×10 pieces of drawing paper. The students decorated a cover with their names. After we laminated the covers, we bound them into a book.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of what it looks like. The parents really loved the final product but it took me weeks and weeks of gluing the pages down. I tried to have my students glue last year but they would often put too much glue or not enough glue and I would have to do it anyway. 
So I’m looking for new writing portfolio ideas. I went searching on Pinterest and here’s the only picture that I’ve found online:

This is somewhat similar to what I did except with much bigger pages. I would usually leave the crafty part of the writing, if there was one, with the writing. I would just fold down the top or fold up the bottom so it fit in the book. In a sense, it was like a scrapbook of writing from the year.
Since there are no Pinterest ideas and none that I could find on blogs, I thought maybe other people would be interested in this topic too.
So I thought I would host a writing portfolio/end of year ideas linky party.

I would love to see how you organize your writing for the end of the year. Do you create a special collection or project? I’m a bit desperate for new ideas so I don’t have to spend hours and hours making the writing anthologies like before. Share your ideas below.

7 Comments on “Writing Portfolio/End of Year Writing Ideas Linky Party

  1. Courtney, I teach 1st grade and the best method I found for writing portfolios is a 3 ring binder. We add a piece to it on the first day of school, from there I work with students to select their best pieces to put in the portfolio throughout the year. At the end of the year, they have an entire collection with their most recent pieces on top. It's great tool to us to reflect periodically throughout the year too! Students are always surprised at their growth! During the last month of school, we go to our portfolios and locate our funniest, best, most interesting pieces etc. We add a neon/bright colored cover to these pieces at the end of the year. This year, I'm going to try to laminate post-its so we can add tabs to these pieces too. I'll try to put pics on my blog freefallinintofirst. 🙂

  2. My son's K teacher simply put them all into page protectors and then put them into a binder. I have also seen this same idea done with a plastic 2 pocket folder. The outside had a design that was laminated and glued I think to the front of it. One pocket held a mini-scrapbook of pictures and the back held a craft.

    Misty
    Think, Wonder, & Teach

  3. In my district, writing has been a special that my students go to while I have plan time. Next year, the students will stay with me for writing – so I'm definitely looking for ideas. I like the suggestion of keeping their writing from the first of the year to show them how they've grown.

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