At Binbir Çiçek Çocuklar Evi and Montessori Preschool, each child has a development assessment folder. We believe that this method is a wonderful way to record each child's skills, achievements, and rapid changes in development during the preschool years. Since children complete much of their learning process through play, it is often difficult to track small changes in their development through observation alone. These development assessment measurements cover four fundamental areas of our children's development. These areas include physical and motor development (fine and gross motor skills) such as walking, balancing, using scissors, holding a pencil correctly, writing, stacking cubes, etc.; social and emotional development including communicating with other children and adults, developing self-confidence, following and complying with instructions, respecting others' personal space, etc.; cognitive and mathematical development including identifying letters and numbers, reading, recognizing shapes and colors, etc.; and academic development measurable by factors such as interest in books, ability to create patterns, and classify concepts.
The Montessori system refrains from grading students and creating report cards at the end of each year, but as Dr. Maria Montessori pointed out, to ensure that our children's intellectual, social, and emotional development progresses correctly, our children are constantly observed and evaluated. Testing and grading tend to dull the natural intrinsic motivation of our children, who are inclined to learn, by reinforcing the sense of competition with peers and emphasizing the importance of getting good grades rather than the process of acquiring knowledge. In mixed-age classrooms, our children can observe each other, and younger ones can learn how to do a material simply by watching older ones without feeling pressured by a teacher or the need to wait for the rest of the class to catch up.
Since each child is evaluated as an individual and receives one-on-one attention, our teachers can encourage our children to surpass themselves or provide them with more support when needed. Our children do not have to "wait for the rest of the class to catch up" to master a skill or concept they wish to develop, and therefore, they do not feel punished when they cannot receive a new lesson in extra time. Our certified Montessori teachers spend hours in our in-service training sessions not only learning how Montessori works should be done but also on how student observations should be made, recorded, and interpreted. These student measurements and evaluations are carried out through the following methods: