Assessment
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Assessment in Kaleide International School exists to benefit children, to allow educators to reflect on and strengthen their abilities to meet the needs of our children for enquiry and expression, and to effectively communicate to families and the wider community what we do at the school. We focus strongly on creating deep, trusting relationships with each child and aim to know who they are, and to understand their life circumstances. For this reason, our assessment is ongoing, process-oriented, and incorporates the emotional, physical, cognitive, social, and moral dimensions of learning and well-being.
Each child is unique and should be allowed to develop at his or her own pace. Our educational approach eschews competition, rewards and punishments. We foster intrinsic motivation, which is the substance of creativity. Activities are mainly open-ended, cooperative, encouraging exploration and creative thinking, and as such do not lend themselves to grading. For this reason, we place great value on formative assessments –which engender learning and are based on observation and documentation–, rather than summative assessment. We firmly believe that conversing with children and observing them gives us much more information about their development than any test could.
We shall be employing a range of assessment tools, depending on the child's age and the activities he or she is involved in.
We understand learning as a process mediated by the child's emotional well-being, and which can be assessed particularly well in terms of the child's involvement in self-chosen activities. These two interrelated indicators of quality in the educational process have been defined within the Process Oriented Monitoring System (or Leuven Scale) developed by Ferre Laevers in Leuven University, the Netherlands.
If there is a lack of well-being and/or involvement, chances are that the child's development may be threatened (socially/emotionally and/or with regard to important developmental areas). And the higher the level of well-being and involvement, the more we contribute to a child's general development.
Following assessment, facilitators can design different interventions such as restructuring the learning spaces and their content, modifying the activities and materials on offer, supporting children's initiative, improving relationships, and allowing children to explore their behaviours, feelings, relationships and values. Specific interventions in relation to children with socio-emotional problems are also recommended.
Each child's learning and development is observed throughout the day in various settings and interactions, both inside and outside the school: in play, in project work, in conversations and individual self-directed tasks. Inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy, our facilitators work with notebooks and cameras as a matter of routine, and draw from these different sources to assess the strengths and needs of the children, provide sparks for projects and develop the curriculum. This documentation is individualised, highly detailed, and comprises cognitive, emotional, physical, social and moral well-being.
The documentation gathered by facilitators can include annotated work selected by adults and children, photographs, photocopies of children's work, transcripts of collaborative exchanges between the children, and children's own comments.
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.
The process as well as the final product of each project is recorded, incorporating the ideas of the children, their memories and feelings, with the teachers' observations of the dynamics of children's explorations and social engagements.
Assessment is an opportunity for reflection, a time to stop and consider what it is we have learnt, how we can improve our competencies, and better direct our action towards our self-chosen goals.
Self-assessment is defined as “the involvement of learners in making judgements about their achievements and the outcomes of their learning” and is a valuable approach to supporting children's learning. It is also useful in fostering children's disposition for lifelong learning, through discussions about their skills and competencies.
Each year, we carry out an in-depth review of an aspect of either literacy or numeracy, as well as one other area of the curriculum. We also review our relationships with the children and their families, and our connections with the wider community.
As an international school, our accreditation process is supervised by the NEASC (New England Association of Schools and Colleges) and includes the school's self-assessment, which is available to families.
