This year-long assessment project grew out of a need to establish an authentic assessment program (intermediate and terminal, formative and summative) as students entered the secondary grades. The project provided a framework for skill lessons correlated to the state (New York) curriculum and the textbook, which continued throughout the year, provided motivation, and encouraged students to take their learning activities beyond the school. The project includes introductory lessons on a series of research skills that are often overlooked in textbook skill lessons. The skills include interviewing sources, requesting interlibrary loan material, using bibliographic indexes to locate a subject or name, working with micropublications, preparing graphs, retrieving information from databases, working with primary sources, and creating maps. Students are required to demonstrate the application of these skills for an immediate evaluation and to see how the cumulative effect of the skill applications leads to a complete product. (BT)