How to Make The Most of Your Assessment Meetings
Stay Organized.
Create an email folder titled "Potential Mentors." Whenever you reach out to a potential mentor, move the email to this folder.
Most likely, you created Google Drive folders in the beginning of the year. Make sure to use them.
This will make it easy to reference certain documents during your assessment meetings, and you won't waste time searching.
Particularly, it is important that you download each article you read as a PDF. Then, move them into a folder titled "Articles" so that you can reference them during an assessment meeting or, later down the road, in a presentation or competition.
Be Thoughtful When Completing Your Meeting Form.
Generally, the meeting form requires students to write a paragraph explaining their progress since the last meeting (include links to articles you've read, researchers you've emailed, etc.) and to set goals for the following meeting.
We recommend that you complete the assessment meeting form/assignment the night before your meeting. In this way, the information on the form will be a recent summary of your progress.
As you complete the assessment meeting form, give some thought as to what you want to talk about with your teacher.
You can write down your questions directly on the form, or simply have them in your head going into the meeting.
You don't want to forget to say something and have to wait until your next assessment meeting or an opportune moment in class to ask your teacher for help.
Set Attainable Goals.
You are setting deadlines for yourself; use assessment meetings as motivation to finish a large assignment by splitting it into many small portions. For each assessment meeting, your goal should be to complete one of those small portions.
There is no point in creating big goals. Often, it is actually regressive in that students end up procrastinating and attempting to do the entire assignment within a smaller time period.
Be Honest.
Didn't achieve one of your assessment meeting goals? Don't fret! Assessment meetings are meant to help YOU, not to punish you for missing deadlines.
This is the time to ask your teacher for help/resources, tell them about the obstacles you're facing, and get their advice.
If it seems like the goal you set was too big, work with your teacher to set a smaller goal.
Feel free to make suggestions about the program. If something isn't working for you, or you have ideas as to how to make it work better, offer up those ideas!
Just think: some students thought it would be a good idea to have a website, and here we are!
The program is relatively new, and therefore still evolving. Leave the program better than it was when you entered!