A portfolio is a purposeful collection of students’ individual work that exhibits their efforts, progress, and achievements over time against a set of clearly defined outcomes. In a portfolio defense, the student publicly engages in a prepared, reflective discussion about their learning, including a self-assessment of growth and their next steps.

A capstones is a culminating project, performance, or structured experience that demonstrates learning of pre-determined outcomes and act as closure to a long-term arc of learning. Often capstones include a significant research and writing component, and conclude with public demonstrations of learning in front of an audience, and successful completion of capstones are often tied to promotion or graduation.

Exhibitions of learning are events that celebrate students’ learning and achievements by making them visible to the community. Whether it is getting student work on the walls, showcasing a class project, or hosting a whole-school exhibition with community members and experts, exhibitions put student work and voice at the center.

A school-wide rubric is an assessment tool that is commonly used to measure student learning across a school site, sometimes through different content areas and sometimes across grade levels as well. School-wide rubrics provide a platform for school site colleagues to collaborate around student learning goals, calibrate around quality student work, and provide students with more consistent expectations, language, and structures across classrooms, content areas, and grade levels.

Formative Assessment is an ongoing assessment practice that regularly measures student learning in order to shape instruction. Teachers use a variety of formative assessment strategies to gather data on student learning in relation to targeted learning objectives, and intentionally take pedagogical action in response to that data.

Student-led Conferences are meetings between students, their families, and their teachers to share academic work and discuss progress. Though the format may vary, these conferences differ from traditional conferences in that they place students at the helm of teacher-supported discussions with parents about student progress and learning.