Assessment is at the center of educational processes, inseparable from teaching since schooling became mandatory. As Alicia Camilloni tells us, the way a school evaluates, what it evaluates and how it interprets and communicates this evaluation also communicates a lot about the school itself.
At Infanzia, we carry out the assessment qualitatively. From nursery to 5th grade, assessment of the learning process takes place.
In Early Childhood Education and up to the 1st year of Elementary School, we carry out individual reports every six months. We understand that at this stage of schooling it is necessary to describe the contexts of learning and how the child responds to each project and sequence of investigation and study.
From the 2nd year onwards, we introduce children to assessment instruments considered more traditional, such as tests and exams, in addition to promoting assessment activities (research, seminars) and considering attitudes as part of the final grade.
The essence of assessment at Infanzia is: we evaluate to teach better and permanently monitor the progress and challenges of each student.
We evaluate to make better decisions about what and how to teach. The interpretation of what students know and don’t know, the different ways in which they solve problems in different areas of knowledge are tools of teaching work. At school, we know and deal with the diversity of people and it would be no different with learning. We develop work processes seeking to meet this diversity.
When they reach Elementary School, still at the beginning of their school life, children learn that at school they learn “specific things” and that this knowledge (sufficient or insufficient) is evaluated by adults; they are learning how to learn, how to demonstrate what you have learned, what to do when you don’t learn, when you have doubts, to trust what you know, to identify what you don’t know! Therefore, minimizing the situation or reacting exaggeratedly, with scolding and punishment does not seem like the best support to produce a context for reflection on the process experienced.
Around the 2nd year they are also learning what a test, a test, an attitudinal grade is. What differentiates an everyday classroom situation from an assessment situation? How do you study at home? What will happen if they don’t study? What should they do with what they don’t know? In addition to the specific content, entry into Elementary School leads to very specific and essential learning for schooling: learning that they can learn. See that there are many and diverse learning processes at stake and following this path is not as simple as it may seem.
Explaining confidence in each child’s ability to learn and a family action plan can communicate to them that they can count on their parents in their learning process, just as they can count on the school. It is not about “studying with the children every day”, but reviewing the study routine, getting closer to the homework routine in terms of completing them, supporting the organization of materials, having closer conversations about what is being studied at school, promoting reading situations and expanding cultural capital, among many other actions.
Whatever the attitude of each family, the important thing is that the actions are anchored in the strong intention of helping the child maintain confidence in their ability to continue learning. Understanding that formal assessment moments are part of school culture with the aim of instrumentalizing teaching work and systematizing the knowledge worked on in the collective.