The Learner Portfolio is designed as a process as much, if not more than a product. Developing rigorous documentation and reflection of learning - whether it be of classroom activities or of texts read - is a key skill. The maintenance and effective presentation of this learning journey is what will make an effective Learner Portfolio.
What is it, again?
In the Subject Guide, the IB describes a key purpose of the Learner Portfolio thus:
The learner portfolio is a place for a student to explore and reflect upon literary and non-literary texts, and to establish connections among them and with the areas of exploration and the central concepts in the subject. In the learner portfolio, students will be expected to reflect on their responses to the works being studied in the corresponding area of exploration. They will also be expected to establish connections between these works and previous ones they have read, and between their perspectives and values as readers and those of their peers. As they progress through the syllabus, it is expected that these connections will be drawn between works within and across areas of exploration, and that they will provide a foundation for the construction of broader knowledge about the transactions between texts, culture and identity. (p.25)
In The Learner Portfolio, I asked you to see it as a place where you maintain your ever-expanding set of notes and reflections on non-literary texts or literary works you have read, all of the different practice assessment tasks you have written, the first and final drafts of your HL Essay (perhaps) - in short, it is nothing more than a well-maintained class exercise book or folder (from the old-fashioned world of tangible things).
Reflections on Learning
I'm sure your English teacher, perhaps your school as a whole, has talked a lot about the need to reflect upon your learning. Often this concept is a little vague and woolly. Too often, it's generic and then asks nothing more of you than how you could do better (in which we all tend to answer the same way: try harder!). The IB mandates certain reflective tasks - see The Course Extended Essay, for example - which ask you to consider where you are in a certain learning process and how you could improve or what your next steps need to be.
It's clear that in the English A: Language & Literature course, the notion of reflection is supposed to be one in which you consider how the things you are reading connect to the Areas of Exploration around which the course is framed: Readers, writers, texts; Time and space; Intertextuality - connecting texts. In Inquiry through Essential Questions, you will gain insight into how that can be done through a process of framing essential questions to help you to articulate your ideas and reflect on your learning to this end.
A Simple Reflection Protocol
In a well-designed inquiry-based classroom, you won't just be receiving information in such a way for you to regurgitate it in a test sometime in the future. The English A: Language & Literature classroom is rarely structured this way since, unlike some other subject discipines, it is not very content-heavy (in the sense of being full of information you have to learn and know). This is generally a good thing, but it does mean that you should always be asking yourself why you are reading what you are reading, what you are learning about the world, knowledge, and about the areas of exploration accordingly, and how you can continue to expand your understanding. In The Learner Portfolio - Classroom Activities, you will see how some effective classrooms try to engage interaction and exploration of such issues... but even if these didn't happen in your classroom, they still offer useful insights into what you could do individually or with your peers to explore key ideas for yourselves further.
All of this can be achieved with a simple reflective tool you can employ after any classroom lesson, or after you have finished reading a text or literary work, or at the end of one of your units of work. It can also be especially useful as you prepare your topics for the HL Essay, for the Individual Oral, or for the final examinations (Paper 2, in particular):
These reflections will not only make up a healthy chunk of the Learner Portfolio, but should ensure that you continue to try to understand why you do what you do in class and beyond, and how it connects to the course as a whole. Exemplar reflections can be found in The Learner Portfolio - Classroom Activities.
How much of The Learner Portfolio - Reflections have you understood?
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