Evaluation and Reporting

Academic excellence is an important value at Churchill. Ongoing evaluation and regular reporting of progress and achievement help students attain high standards. Evaluation serves several purposes:

• gives the student, parents, and teacher specific feedback about the child's strengths, needs, and growth;
• helps parents understand how well their child is meeting expectations; and
• enables teachers to plan a program based on the abilities and needs of the children in their classes.

Methods

Although they may vary from class to class, Churchill's evaluation methods reflect our philosophy and our commitment to a child-centred, holistic approach to learning. When assessing student gains, we consider the process of learning as well as the finished product. Since our students are encouraged to investigate, explore, and discover, we are aware that evaluation procedures must adequately represent the complex learning involved in these processes.

Students at Churchill are given standardized tests when other students within OCDSB receive them. However, we continue to rely as well on more authentic, non-test assessment procedures. All the methods used are designed to discover what students actually know, and what they can do with this knowledge.

The following are strategies teachers employ:

• Talk individually with students about their work on an ongoing basis;
• Establish close communication with each child's parents to determine learning style, strengths, needs, and emotional, social, and academic development;
• Observe students as they work;
• Hold conferences with students about their work;
• Note responses to open-ended questions;
• Encourage peers to provide feedback to one another;
• Present students with a task, project, or investigation, and then observe them as they complete the task, interview them about how and why they worked as they did, and assess the results of their efforts. This technique is called performance assessment;
• Use goal setting to assist children to reflect upon and to assess their own work, to recognize their development over time, and to plan areas where further learning is necessary; and
• Use portfolios as the basis of student assessment to get a clear view of what children are learning, and of the thinking processes and problem-solving skills they are using. Portfolios also empower students to be active participants in their own evaluation and learning.

Formal Reporting

Formal reporting at Churchill occurs three times during each academic year and consists of conferences and written reports. The first conferences are held in the late fall, and they may be parent/teacher, three-way with students present, or student-led. A second conference may be held in March to share information or concerns that are relevant at this time.

Staff is committed to holding student-led conferences at least once a year, where children present their work to parents during formal, scheduled sessions. During the conferences, students are responsible for reporting their personal and academic progress and for setting goals with their parents and teacher. In this way, they have an opportunity to practise real-world skills, to gain confidence, and to acquire leadership abilities.

The school sends home written reports at the end of the first, second, and third terms. The Ministry legislates the format of these reports.

Because we believe that all children can be successful when working at their own levels, it has been our practice not to use traditional reports with letter and/or number grades that sort and rank students. Instead, since the school's inception, we have used detailed anecdotal reports that provide parents with as much information as possible about the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social development of their children at school.

With the introduction of standardized province-wide report cards, we have had to alter our reporting procedures. We will continue to look for ways to satisfy Ministry requirements and still provide reports that reflect our values and beliefs.

Neither written reports nor scheduled conferences, however, can replace the ongoing open communication between home and school. Parents and teachers are encouraged to contact each other at any time to share information or to discuss questions or concerns.