Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Some Examples Of Recording And Evaluation
Whatever method you adopt; recording should become a natural and easy process, not contrived. If you value recording and evaluation as an essential part of education then it should never be a chore, and will serve no other purpose than to enhance the kind of education you are offering your children.
Part 6, Planning Methods, illustrated many approaches to recording children’s learning, particularly in the planning stages. Most of these also serve as a permanent record of achievement. Many homeschooling parents keep a Recording Folder or file where all records are kept and are easy to access for reference. This folder can include samples of the children’s work.
When you are filing samples of children’s work, it is a good idea to attach a comment
explaining the purpose related to the activity. The following example of an evaluative comment
attached to the child’s work sample is lengthy, but very revealing, and shows the type of
information that can be recorded:
Roger's drawing of a robot he had made out of LEGO bricks shows his ability to draw to
scale and to keep things in proportion. He has really captured the depth of the robot,
showing very good ability with perspective. This was not surprising as he has demonstrated
it with his earlier pictures of houses. However, this is the first picture of a real object in 3
dimensions I have seen him draw, and it was a difficult and complex subject. His colouring,
in pencil, shows attention to detail and is accurate. This demonstrates his continuing
fascination for perfection!
15/5/95 - self initiated task
The next example is one the author developed over several years of trialing different approaches to recording her children’s home school learning programs. It is particularly suited to a child centred style of home schooling, in which a mixture of adult initiated activities balanced with child initiated activities provide the learning opportunities. Often such an approach is hard to qualify in ‘educational’ terms. Most activities flow or stem from interests shown by the children, activities already in progress, or just life itself as it unfolds in the home, with not much overall structure or pre-programming. A diary or journal approach gives a wonderful account of what learning is happening, and it can be very personal. However, it may not be appropriate for the purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness of your home schooling program to others, should this be necessary or desirable.
The purpose of developing this recording system, particularly the weekly record sheets, was to demonstrate the amount and quality of learning that occurs without pre-planning every day in the home school. This assisted in boosting confidence in the chosen educational method, and helped illustrate to others the effectiveness of a mostly unstructured approach to education. It includes a month’s forward plan, weekly records covering activities completed during that month, and provision for evaluative comments over the period. It highlights the areas of learning achieved mostly through unstructured activities, in traditional educational curriculum terms. Primarily these sheets served as summaries, intended to give a brief overview of what is intended or what has already happened. Brevity is the key to successful recording, as anything that takes a long time to do becomes tedious, and may actually begin to interfere with the learning process.
The recording approach illustrated was done at regular intervals and not continuously. This allowed samples of the learning program to be collected. Weekly activity sheets were recorded over a month and placed with a monthly planning sheet to form a record of the learning program about three to four times a year. In this way the recording process served to reassure the chosen approach to learning was effective, and it also provided an overview when registration was reviewed.
 previous page |
Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
