One way to determine what your students already know is to have them write a short summary of what they already know about a topic.  Another way to tell is to have your students fill out a KWL and have them share what they know aloud with the class or have the class turn them in and read them.

   It is important to establish anchors because you gain a sense of where students are starting, and how they are meeting their learning goals.  In a project based classroom you expand your opportunities to expand differentiated instruction.  It is important for students to be able to refer back to an anchor point. 

   One way to assess what students learned is to ask them what they learned.  Students will let you know what they actually did learn from the project and you will not have to guess.  Surprisingly, students will be honest with you.  

   It is important for us to determine what other foods students in our class have already eaten.  It is also important to determine what they already know about cooking and preparing food.  It is also important to see what students actually did learn from our project.  This will be useful in determining how to teach future lessons.