Heart for Art's PMEL

For the purposes of this information page, the following example describes how PMEL takes place at Heart for Art (BAP’s extra-curricular programme): 

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The Community Art Facilitator plans her term 1 classes for grade 4. She designs an art project for them, she plans 8 art lessons where the children will ultimately create a big group clay mandala. One week into the term, she has a class register and lays the foundation to her monitoring and evaluation steps by setting the baseline for each child in her class using the Child Development Assessment Tool (CDAT). Using the tool, she rates every child’s general, creative and emotional development as well as social interaction skills. After every lesson she writes an output journal, reflecting and noting how the class went, what the successes and challenges were, also noting what the way forward is with the class and why. This monitoring process informs her about the best way forward with the coming lessons (for example, does she need to change something she planned due to unforeseen circumstances such as the school day being shortened due to community unrest). During the term, she also writes 2 monthly implementation reports for her manager (she uses her output journals as her main resource). In this report she lists what her plans for the month were, she describes what she achieved, how many children she taught, how many lessons took place, what went well and didn’t go well and why. She also includes what was not achieved (according to what the plan says should have been done during the reporting period). At the end of the report, she includes what her plans for the following month are (these plans are what her next monthly report will speak to).

 

At the end of the term, she assesses every child again and gives them another rating in each of their Child Development Assessment Tool (CDAT) categories. By doing this, she is monitoring and evaluating the stability levels of the children in her class. Also, at the end of the term, she and her fellow Heart for Art CAFs have a “harvest” where they reflect together and evaluate how the term went. They talk about everything that worked, everything that didn’t, they talk through what can be done better and how they also talk about the outcomes of their CDAT assessments and what impact they are (or not) having on children, this is their learning. Based on these discussions, they plan for the next term together, also referring to the plan they made for the year as the bigger picture. The Heart for Art manager writes up their reflection process, their lessons learned and uses these with the team’s monthly reports to write comprehensive funder reports, including the plans for the next implementation period.  

 

The following lists all the elements/tools that are utilised in Heart for Art’s PMEL cycle. Some tools are used more often than others, for example; class registers and output journals are used for every class/lesson (up to eight times in a term). All the tools have been listed in the general order in which they are used by team members. The below graphic is a visual representation of how the tools work in a cycle.

 

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