Lesson 8: Wrapping Up Your Unit Studies
8-2 Assessment Materials
Keeping record of the work your children do may not be the most exciting part of your studies but it is an important one. If you already keep detailed records then you don't need this pep talk. If you are like me, all the encouragement and short cuts you can get are appreciated. I'll do my best.
While your state may not require detailed record keeping, the need will often become evident years down the road. If your child goes to college or later enters formal schooling, a portfolio may be required to show the type of work they have produced. To get a job, portfolios are often more important than a resume. I recently found that applying for a home loan depended on providing a Certified Public Accountant with a detailed portfolio of my freelance writing business. Not just for these school years but throughout life I would recommend keeping records of important work done.
Now I am no great record keeper. To me it's like housekeeping. I know it needs to be done to some degree, but from my point of view it gets in the way of "real" life. So, my record keeping often consists of tossing a copy of some work into a large, catch-all box which I try to organize every few years when it gets too full to close the lid properly. More than once these boxes (one for me and one for Jen) have bailed me out when records were required . . or sometimes just a memory jogger to update a resume or biography.
It's one thing to see that your children cover and learn the basic material. It is another to have a useful record of these accomplishments. Here are a few thoughts on what type of records you may wish to keep which involve a minimum of extra work. (You have more than enough just teaching!)
Record Keeping
If you keep detailed records of work completed then your unit studies may be just a compilation of the best work done. If your record keeping is more informal, consider adding any of these assessment tools to your unit study saves:
- Evaluation Checklist by subject and grade - What Your Child Needs to Know When has over one hundred pages devoted to detailed lists of skills to be mastered in all subject areas. Lists can be found with many educational book companies, curriculum suppliers, home ed organizations, and similar resource books such as the Duffy Curriculum manuals. A typical checklist could contain your observations regarding knowledge, skills in subject areas, life skills, personal development. The latter could cover behavior such as character traits (this fits in well with the trait per theme we discussed) and work & study habits. Such a list can help plan future goals and gives confidence that all areas of study are being covered in a timely fashion which may be necessary for local government reporting.
- Log entries - In our textbook, Valerie recommends keeping a simple but detailed log of daily activities with many suggestions for ways to do it with a minimum of effort.
Now you may not be into detailed record keeping. In this case, if you've written up a detailed plan for your unit studies as mentioned in Lesson 7 this can serve as your log. Simply make annotations on it indicating what parts you did or did not complete.
- Theme-related work - Certain projects you may wish to do with each unit study or as a regular part of your studies may cover the job of record keeping. Consider including items like: unit study planning sheets student journal entries passports, activity sheets, job descriptions, contracts, etc. comprehension tests book reports list of books read vocabulary list.
You may want to keep these in a central location, adding to it as you do each study. Otherwise they become excellent additions to portfolios, websites, and other record keeping tools discussed in this lesson.
Tests
The time-honored technique of assessing a student's comprehension is the test. These also become excellent records of the work mastered for various subject areas. You may find tests all ready prepared for the material you use in your studies or you may want to compose a test to assess mastery of the material covered in the unit study. Designing a test for younger students may also be an excellent project for older students.
Oral Presentations
Another excellent tool for showing the knowledge learned or skill gained in the course of a unit study is the oral presentation. It may be a brief simple talk given to you the teacher or it may be the presentation of information gathered in an enjoyable presentation for a community group like senior citizens at a nursing home.
You may want to consider an audio or video recording of an oral presentation to keep as part of you permanent record. This could be stored on your personal website even – if you have the proper hardware and software.
Multi-Media Memories
Your theme may lend itself to a set of photographs of the action of the unit study. Perhaps you would like to do a photography study where the students actually learn photographic techniques. You'll want to set up a display of the photography. These results can be displayed in any of several forms discussed in these sections. They would display beautifully in a graphics portfolio, a newsletter, on a website, in scrapbook form, etc.
