Let's sum up the last weeks:

As I didn't know what specifically write about, I decided to sum up some of the most relevant points I got from the last classes. The concepts I took for my piece of writing are:  Portfolios and Giving Instructions.

Regarding portfolios,  I think that it is a challenging way of assessment that can be used as an important tool to encourage students to be more active in their learning process, since they are able to have a record of the significant things they learn, and this makes them take awareness of their own responsibility. Furthermore, portfolios can foster the learners' critical ability to write about their own criteria and reflect on what they think, why they do it and how it can affect positively or negatively their own learning process. However, when implementing portfolios, it is necessary to have a clear individual voice but also a group one. Teachers should take into account students' view as part  of the decision-making, so here is when we realize that teachers' as students' views are both important. Sometimes, there is an issue related to subjectivity, as teachers we can not grade depending on how nice my student's face is, or how friendly they seem to be; despite it is important to take into account our ideas and preferences when teaching, at the moment of assessing we have to be fair and keep in mind my students' whole process, that's why a portfolio is a very personal, formative and quialitative way of assessment.
  

Now, taking into account the important role of clear instructions when assessing, I would like to add that this is also a challenging task for the teacher. We might give our students some instructions we think are clear enough, but sometimes we don't take into account the variety of students we have; some of them might understand and some of them might not. An issue like this would affect students' performance in tests and not only regarding summative assessment, but also those formative tasks we design for our classes. Actually, the way students get used to listen, observe, analyze, understand and then go on by their own, is gonna be the one they do in their exams. So, it is important to give instructions step by step, asking them if it is understood or if there are some doubts that block their minds and here is when the exam becomes even a worse nightmare. In my point of view, it is essential to privide them with an example first, and then they'll have to face the exam, but this time they might not feel that afraid of being lost or failing the exam.

Here you have a short video and a research project that might lead us to understand better how and when to give the instructions to our SS.
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED341235http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp9Qswogelg