Creating portfolio for high school

I’ve read other posts about building portfolios. Our state doesn’t require them for each year, but most of our local colleges (even the community colleges) want them. My son is in 9th grade. I’ve saved his tests for any subject he took in 7th and 8th that could remotely count as high school. I’m having trouble deciding what to put in the English section. For grammar, I know I could put quizzes. (Our curriculum has one after every five lessons). But spelling, well, this year we’re doing an intensive review. His spelling tests do not reflect 9th grade level words. And I’m not consistent in testing him on his reading and literature. Would putting his spelling tests and a detailed reading list be enough?

Thanks in advance,
Karen

Has he written any papers? I’d include his reading list and a writing sample for English. I’d skip the spelling sample.

Thanks. He’s not writing papers yet, but I’ll keep that in mind.

For high school English, you’ll definitely want writing samples in the future classes, even if they are short, one-page writings. I wasn’t sure from your initial post whether you were talking about English he did in 7th and 8th grades–if so, I don’t think I’d count those towards high school at all. I would only count things that were clearly high school level–English is one that’s usually harder to “bump up.” Is there a reason you would want to count it? Or am I misreading your post?

I wasn’t planning to use 7th and 8th grade English on his transcript. But he took world geography in 7th and I was debating whether to count it. And the earth and space science, Mississippi studies, and health he took in 8th grade are definitely for high school credit.