Repost: Work Samples for Your Student's Portfolio.

This is a great time of year to set aside your students' work samples.  I often get questions on how to organize student work samples.  Any work you do now pays great dividends later.  

The simplest thing to do is to either make a copy or put the original of a writing sample,  math sample, or other student work sample in a file folder and put it somewhere safe where you can find it later.  (I added the safe place as a reminder to myself. )  I would also grab a piece of paper to begin to write down books your student has read for a booklist.   You continue to do this a couple more times and your portfolio is ready to share with me in 2023. Many families mail the finished portfolio to me, they scan their documents to me, or they upload to the Ohio Homeschool online system.  

There is also the digital option.  You can take a picture of your student's work using your phone, or scan it with your computer scanner.  Make sure they are relatively high resolution so I can read them. Another key piece  is how you store the files.  You probably want to store them off your phone or computer.   A phone or computer crash would destroy all of your work samples.  You could upload to Google Drive, Google Photos; some type of cloud storage; iCloud; an external drive or thumb drive.  Later you can upload those files to my online portfolio system or email them to me.  

You can also put an app on your phone to scan items to PDF.  Here is an example for Android.  Here is another list that shares some Android apps.   Here are some tips from Apple support, and an app to scan.  

You also may want to take  pictures throughout the year of projects or field trips.  You can store those in some type of cloud storage as well.   The other option is to open up a separate Instagram account.  You can add your pictures all year.  You are able to keep the account private and just share with me if you would like.  Here is more information on setting up a second Instagram account just for your  student's portfolio.

Hopefully this is helpful to get you started.  If you have any other ideas please put them in the comments.  We are all in this together.