The assessment problem — how do you help kids understand makes outstanding work throughout a project, from beginning — do they have something to aim for — to the end — do they honestly evaluate their work and understand how their work compares to the standards set at the beginning as well as the real-world goals that should be guiding their work. (That’s a lot, isn’t it…)

With one opening project, I had a few ideas about what would make it outstanding. We then wrote together around four questions:

Top left: what will you struggle with in order to get your work to outstanding?
Top right: what are you worried about in terms of getting this done?
Bottom left: how will you help the other people in the class get to outstanding?
Bottom right: what’s going to the be the easiest part of creating outstanding work?

We then talked about the definition, line by line, and the picture below has my notes.

One of the things I want kids to think about as they’re telling the story of a project is how it changes as you move towards completion. For design stuff, you see it in the changes in the drawings or in the reality of working with certain materials. With the pallets, there was one set of wood you might have had when before you started taking it apart; there’s another set of wood when the wood is apart. And splintered. And full of nails.

But I really wanted them to think about the good reasons why a project changes. After two years at the Workshop School and even more years as a human being, they know the language of excuses. What I hoped for with this activity was a deeper understanding of the important ways that projects can change in helpful or productive ways. In other words, can they discuss how the materials changed their design or how what seemed reasonable as a drawing was impossible in the shop.