Carol

Last night, I invited Carol, one of my previous BEd students to give a talk to my ENG 3172 students in my lecture. Carol has just started her career as a primary school teacher since 2008 and is working in a Band 1 school located in Diamond Hill. What she shared with students was how she used portfolio-based approach to support P1 students' learning of writing. Though she only talked about the assessment practice for about 40 minutes, students were very attentive and studied the students' sample work carefully. Towards the end of the talk, students raised some questions concerning the implementation of the portfolio approach in junior primary classroom.

Based upon students' responses, this kind of talk is welcome and actually Carol is in a position to share her experience with the pre-service teachers as she is the real consumer of this alternative assessment approach. Her presence could really bridge the gap between theory and practice. After the talk, I treated Carol for dinner. She really deserved it! We shared a lot of interesting anecdotes when she was still a student in the Institute and she told me about her work and students. What's an interesting evening!