Total Talent Portfolio

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be,
and you will help them become what they are capable of being.

Goethe

The Total Talent Portfolio is the component of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model by which schools can assess strengths, interests, and talents of their students.

By documenting the achievements of students the Total Talent Portfolio allows teachers to provide better service to them. For this, the Total Talent Portfolio differentiates between two kinds of information: status and action information.

Status Information:

• Abilities: The student's natural talent or aptitude for particular content areas.
• Interests: Special topics or activities the student is interested in.
• Style preferences: The styles a student prefers, in terms of instruction, the learning environment, thinking styles, and styles of expression.

Status information documents characteristics of a student by using different kinds of assessments, or what is already known about the student.

Action information

• Regular curriculum: Special talents and achievements a student has showed within normal classroom activities.
• Enrichment learning situations: How a student reacted to different enrichment activities and what activities the student was preoccupied with.
• Works and products: What the student produced within or without the school context.
  

Action information tells about what a student has achieved, or what is newly learnt about the student.

Based on the collected information, teachers can advise students in what kind of activity they best get involved. An additional function of the Total Talent Portfolio by documenting a students achievement is that learning progress becomes visible to the student, too.

Further Information

• Learn more about The Total Talent Portfolio: A Plan for Identifying and Developing Gifts and Talents at the Schoolwide Enrichment Model web page.

Sources

• Renzulli, Joseph S. & Reis, Sally M.: The Schoolwide Enrichment Model - Second Edition; Creative Learning Press, Mansfield 1997, p. 28, 75-88
• Purcell, Jeanne H. & Renzulli, Joseph S.: Total Talent Portfolio; Creative Learning Press, Mansfield 1998

Back to the Index "What do you know about Gifted Education?"

Back to "Homepage M. Giger"

Please address any suggestions, critic, and questions to mattgig@freesurf.ch.

Matthias Giger, April 2006 (Update: 26-04-2006)
www.gigers.com