Key questions for the parents:

1. This program is helping me and my child get where we want to go?
2. This program has made a difference in what I can do with my child?
3. What I have learned here counts anywhere else?

Key questions for the GSL facilitator:

1. Have made progress towards their goals in measurable ways?
2. Can apply what has been learned to every day life?
3. Have achieved skills that count in terms of their next step?

In facilitating the classes, the facilitator needs to ensure that parents can answer “yes” to the above questions. In the intake, parents are asked what goals they have for themselves and their children. The facilitator should refer to these answers and ensure that the focus of GSL classes incorporates the items the parents have listed as their goals in the intake. It may help to record these goals on a separate sheet of paper so that the facilitator can refer back to the parent goals. When the midpoint and final evaluations are done, if the parents have answered that the class has met their needs, then learning has taken place.

The children are informally assessed by the child care providers during each class. Nothing is recorded until the end of the program. At this time, a “Child Report Card” (Appendix 5 ) is given to each parent based on the child’s behaviours during children time with the child care providers. This report card focuses on observed improvements in knowledge, skills and attitudes in emergent literacy skills. This is a summative evaluation. The child care providers are the professionals who interact with the GSL facilitator on a daily basis. They also complete an overall evaluation on the relationship with the facilitator, how the class went, how the parents interacted with them and their children as well as anything of interest.

Key questions for the child care providers:

• Have made progress? (knowledge, skills, behaviours)
• Have had fun?
• Have achieved skills that count in terms of being school-ready?

Caseworkers not only refer to Get Set Learn but they also record their client’s participation in the program. At the end of the program, they are asked to complete a survey and fax it back to the GSL facilitator. This is another summative evaluation that tracks the satisfaction of the caseworkers with the GSL program (see appendix 7).