Projects

Within project work, our assessment is viewed as research into the learning process and has five interrelated goals:

• Assessing a child's learning and how these new concepts, skills and ideas are integrated into her world-view;

• Assessing a child's emotional development and social and communication skills in relation to team work;

• Assessing how we as educators have facilitated this learning and reflecting on ways to improve;

• Assessing, together with the children, how useful a particular project has been in terms of building upon the children's knowledge, promoting social and community skills, or in terms of curricular content;

• Assessing the usefulness of a project within a community framework.

We should strive to record he process as well as the final product of each project, incorporating the ideas of the children, their memories and feelings, with your observations of the dynamics of children's explorations and social engagements.

It is also useful to assess your own skills in supporting the children's learning within projects. Some of the questions we may ask ourselves are:

• did we create a no-risk environment?

• did I model for the children?

• did I have the appropriate resources?

• in how many ways did the children connect with the project?

• did I allow the children to eventually direct the process?

• did I encourage children to use their own resources?

• did I allow the group to move at an appropriate pace?

• did I provide guidance without taking control?

• did I create an atmosphere of trust in which the children felt comfortable evaluating themselves and each other fairly and honestly?

Assessment of projects should protect and enhance our view of the school as a learning community. In this sense, assessment of the learners and evaluation of the project are not separated out, but constitute the same process: collectively, the children learn to generate their own ideas and respond to a problem by testing their solution.