6 Assessing project work
At the end of the project, the teams’ work needs to be assessed. Rather than marking it yourself, you could try some peer review. Whatever method you decide to opt for, it is important that the students know what the success criteria are for their project from the outset. You can co-construct the success criteria at the start with the students. Doing it this way would be very democratic. This is where examples of previous projects might be useful.
Putting the success criteria on a poster and keeping it on the project wall will allow all your students to see it while they work. This will help keep them focused on the aspects of the work that they will gain credit for.
Activity 3: Devising some assessment criteria for your students’ projects
This is an activity for you to do on your own, or with another teacher.
- Start by brainstorming all the features of a good project and good project team working. This will include things such as being well-written, interesting, scientifically accurate, well-researched and well-presented, involving all members of the group, and demonstrating decision making, critical thinking and interpersonal relationships.
- Group all your points under three main headings. When you are trying to assess a piece of work like this, it is relatively easy to keep three main criteria in your head. You could use headings from the co-scholastic areas such as life skills or literacy and creative skills. You should usually use scientific skills as one of the three headings it will depend on what you want to get out of the project.
- Create a grid with three main headings and three or points under each one. Decide how you will assess each point. You could give a qualitative comment, or you could give that point a mark out of five.
Once you are confident about working in this way, you might try getting your class to decide on the criteria. For example, Teacher Samsana could have asked the group managers to discuss suitable criteria, or she could have shared her criteria with them and let them suggest changes. For more detail, see Resource 2, ‘Assessing progress and performance’.
5 Formats for project work