Self Evaluate

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Self Evaluation

Self-evaluation may be new to some of you. Simply put, you train your child to evaluate his performance, feelings, thoughts, ideas or actions accurately, according to objective standards.

The key to training students in self-evaluation is CLEAR DEFINITIONS. Students who clearly understand goals and procedures can do much self-evaluation. Not only can this save you valuable time, but self-evaluation is a life skill that will serve your child his whole life long. Properly done, self-evaluation involves:

Setting goals with a mentor.
Defining standards with a mentor (or a group) using clear communication.
Devising a scale for measuring results.
Critical self-analysis according to a set, pre-agreed, standard. This promotes humility and self-examination opportunities for spiritual development.
- If a child agrees that his job is sub-standard, your job is to lead him to discover sinful thoughts, words, and deeds that led to his poor performance. The process strikes at pride, and shows us our imperfections and need for a Savior.
- A successful evaluation promotes feelings of accomplishment and joy when the child succeeds. We need to be careful to lead the child to praise the God Who gave him his ability to succeed.
- Such training will enable students to work better in group settings, where they know that they are imperfect performers in most situations, that they must work with others to clearly define goals and standards, and that they will need to work hard to succeed at the project.

The easiest, and maybe most familiar, form of self-evaluation is the answer key for your math book. You may already have children who use not only math solutions books but many kinds of answer keys in order to save you time by correcting finished work before bringing their wrong answers to you.

There are other, very helpful, ways to use self evaluation, however. Here are just a few:

With your student, develop a checklist of quantifiable tasks and then ask the student to use the checklist to evaluate his own work. Here are disciplines that lend themselves to this method:
- Chore checklists: not only lists of chores, but lists of tasks within a chore (example: dish clean up: put away perishables, rinse dishes, load dishwasher, load dishwasher soap, turn on machine, wipe counters, clean sink).
- Writing mechanics checklists: after teaching various components, create a checklist for the student to attach to all writing assignments to show that he's checked his writing for capital letters at start of sentence, punctuation at the end, capitalization of proper nouns, etc. For writing, especially, the Write Source books contain many helpful check sheets (they call them rubrics) that you can modify, or simply reproduce, and require your child to complete at various stages of his writing projects.
- Project completion: when beginning any project, start with a FULL explanation of the project--goals, process and product (it's best if you can show examples of others' finished projects. For this reason, we provide Gallery pages on this web site!). Then, with the student, develop a checklist of steps he'll complete to finish the project.
Related to the point above, you can also develop (with the student, depending on age) evaluation grids that allow the student to help decide the goals and standards of the project before starting it. For instance, let's say he is going to build a model pyramid. Ideally, he'll start by either viewing others' attempts, or by looking through the directions he's been given to complete the project.

Example: You might, using guided discussion, ask, "Chris, what goes into making a good model pyramid?" He might answer by specifying materials, construction techniques, color choices (for historical accuracy), amount of detail in the model. From this discussion, you can help your child develop a reasonable chart, or list, of criteria that will be used to grade his project. Then, after his model is completed, you and he can discuss and agree on a fair grade based on these clearly defined goals and standards.

Here's a sample grid you might develop with your student for the above example:

Standards	Poor	Fair	Good	Excellent
Materials	Made quickly of cardboard. Shows almost no effort or imagination.	Little thought or effort reflected in materials used. Can be improved significantly.	Materials were well chosen and well manipulated. Could have added other materials for a superior model.	Best possible choices to reflect historical accuracy given the scale of the model and time allotted to the project.
Construction	Care not taken to make pyramid look tightly joined. Sloppy job.	Construction is flimsy, or not as complete as it could be given time allowed and skill level of student.	Construction is solid and neat, but more time could have been given to details or imaginative additions, such as interior views or cut-aways.	Solid construction. Outstanding joins and overall neatness. Construction reflects much time and attention to detail and historical accuracy.
Color choices	No thought given to accuracy.	Student made an attempt at historical accuracy in color choice.	Good choice for color: historically accurate. Could have added detail to the coloration of the model.	Great attention to detail and historical accuracy is reflected in this model.
Detail	Little to no detail, inside or outside the model.	Some detail, but given the time allotted and the student's skill level, this model could have been better.	Much detail, and historically accurate. Could have done a better job with a specific aspect of the model.	Superior attention to detail: student added models of human builders, interior treasures, and surrounding fauna.

Develop rubrics automagically from this site for most types of evaluations!

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