Memory Pages Show Growth

What a difference 6 months can make. At this time of life, children are shooting up in height, losing all those teeth, growing out of barely-used clothes - and leaps and bounds growth can happen in the classroom, too. Sometimes it's artistic growth, or emotional growth, or academic. All these little minds and bodies, hurtling along!

One of the ways we can measure one area of growth at school is through keeping work samples. When you do one thing repeated throughout the year, it becomes a written real-life record of progress. We call this "authentic assessment".

Our hero, the Memory Book. Children sometimes marvel at how much better they have become as a writer over the weeks and months. As we complete our pages each time, we continue to add skills - perhaps we are ready to add punctuation, or to switch from all upper case to lower case? Maybe we need to be challenged to write whole paragraphs with lots of juicy adjectives? Very special pages may even be selected by the student to go in their portfolios as "best works."

Mid-September

Early March

This is the best type of yearly project - ideal for a mixed-aged classroom. Each child can work to their ability and I am able to perfectly individualize writing targets.