Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Part 7 Recording and Evaluation
There are two main elements to evaluation: observation and reflection.
Observation is at the heart of any educational program. As a parent you have continuously relied on your observation skills since your children were born. This on-going observation of their actions and reactions, their temperaments and developing personalities, allows you to build relationships with them to ensure successful learning in all areas of their lives.
Evaluation also requires the conscious reflection on the usefulness, the appropriateness, and the outcomes (products and results) of your children’s activities. When thinking about evaluation it is useful to set what can be considered as ‘indicators’ of success. These help you to know how progress has occurred. Evaluation should be looked at positively, as ways in which success and improvement can be celebrated and built on. To be most effective evaluation must be a constructive process.
The process of evaluation can include assessment, but involves much more than simply tests and exams. It requires a continuous, conscious thought process about what you are hoping to achieve, whether your methods are appropriate and how things may have been done differently. Assessment is only one way to do this. There are many different ways to evaluate, and these are usually related to which aspect of the event you are evaluating.
Recording in an organised way your observations and evaluation comments of your children’s learning activities will help you to plan your children’s education to suit their learning needs. It also plays an important part in building your confidence in your role as a home educating parent.
The Importance Of Recording
In addition to all the recording you do as a parent, your children will engage in an enormous amount of different types of recording as they do various educational activities. Understanding the importance of your children’s recordings, and the role these play in evaluating the learning experience, can assist to enhance the actual activities.
Recording, when done by both children and parents, and linked to the evaluation process, is useful for the following reasons:
- Providing a springboard for further explorations.
- Linking outcomes of knowledge and skills to the process of learning, encouraging recognition of your children’s individual styles of learning.
- Forming the basis of reference sources of an on-going nature, both informative and evaluative; for example, children's project books, dictionaries.
- Developing your children’s language and mathematical skills, particularly reading, writing and oral skills.
- Celebrating learning as valued and exciting by displaying learning outcomes using a variety of media.
- Co-operative collecting of samples of the children’s work in scrapbooks or portfolios encourages a sense of responsibility, commitment, co-operation, and focuses on progress and achievement.
- As an aid to memory retention.
- Reflection after the activity is finished can reveal insights into the children’s learning processes which may be missed during the activity.
It is impossible to separate evaluation from planning. Effective evaluation needs to be linked to your learning plans, as well as reflecting your overall educational approach. Evaluation should be manageable, simple, practical, meaningful and provide useful information. All participants in the learning program are responsible for evaluation, not just you, the parent. Most of all, evaluation needs to reflect the developmental nature of your children’s learning, as well as monitoring their achievements.
Keep in mind that evaluation is a celebration of achievement, rather than an assessment of what the child doesn’t know or understand yet, or is unable to do. This will help make the process an enjoyable one, and will build successful home schooling experiences.
 previous page |
Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
