Creating a final assessment for a unit plan gives that unit more focus and alignment. Smagorinsky notes that class time becomes more purposeful and helpful to students as they work towards accomplishing the unit goals. As teachers create a final assessment, they become able to realize the various goals needed for students to learn, and through such discern what needs to be taught. Recognizing this helps to ensure students are able to best achieve throughout and at the end of the unit. Since each unit ideally ties together the overarching concept of entire year, students will theoretically be able to reflect on what they learn over the course of the units. A process portfolio seems to fit ideally within this model.

            At my school, we keep student work folders to maintain documentation of work graded with explicit and corrective feedback, that has been handed back to our students. After reading about the benefits of portfolios, I think I can modify the way in which we use these folders in my classroom. So frequently my students lack time to reflect on their learning, mainly because I do not provide it to them. Though I understand how necessary reflection is, I have often felt restricted by time and expectations placed on me from my administration and the pacing of the guided curriculum. Despite this, I would like to give my students more class time for these reflections as they can work to recognize what they learned from the products they created. Although we are already halfway through this year, I would like to place more of a focus on the process of reflection in my classroom. Despite not being explicitly told at the beginning of this year that they would produce a portfolio at the end of the year, I still believe that I can create time and space for my students to recognize the work they have already created. I now understand that I must give them time to engage with processes of re-writing their work as well.

            One way to figure out what works best for my students will be to create a teacher log to reflect on my instruction. Though with seven classes and almost 175 ninth graders I often feel overwhelmed and lack free or quiet time during the day, I would like to try to do better with considering areas I can improve on for my students. Though a daily reflection might be difficult, I might try to take time every few days to recognize what I am doing well with and what I need to make better. Since I know that doing this will best benefit my students, I am absolutely willing to work differently to discover what behooves them in our classroom.