Hello. Our next topic that we will be discussing is, Observation and Assessment in Early Childhood. We'll start out with a quote, "In order to make formative decisions that will guide what goes on in the classroom, there needs to be an organized system in place to collect information. When we record our observations and collect data, we hold in memory the actions, nonverbal communication, or comments that seem to be significant to children's thinking." We need to have an organized system to collect the information and then we can go back and refer to that information at a later date. So really, what is assessment? Assessment is the process of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using information to increase development and learning. We're collecting the data, we're analyzing it afterwards, we're interpreting it what does it mean, and we're using that information to inform our teaching practices as we move forward. We're gathering information about each child in the classroom, we're reviewing it and then using it to plan activities that are developmentally appropriate. So we are planning activities based on our observations or assessments of the children in our classroom. Assessment focuses on children's progress towards developmental goals and we focus on the milestones and state standards. The CDC has some really great milestones that I refer often in my classrooms. I pass the information onto my students and hopefully they use these as they move forward. Later on, I have a link that you can look at the milestones. Assessment takes into account a child's experiences, their background knowledge, their family input, and their cultural influences. We need to think about all of those things when we're assessing, when we're documenting information on children. If they don't have background knowledge on a topic, then they might not be proficient at it as quickly as some children who have the background knowledge. In those instances, we need to look at the child, determine where they are and what they need in assistance and support to move forward. Assessment should occur over time and in various situations. We're going to do assessment on the first Monday of every month. It's pretty much continuous, every day you are documenting, you're finding information, you're writing things down, you're looking for information on the children in the classroom. In various situations we're looking in the different interests areas that they're playing with. We are now always sitting a child down to do an assessment with them to see if they know their shapes, to see if they know their colors. You're looking at them where they are and documenting what you see. It should happen in natural settings, so if you are assessing a child, you're not taking them into a classroom across the hall to gather some information on them. You're doing it right in your classroom where they're most comfortable, and they should be authentic. Assessments should be, and they must be really a critical part of every high-quality early childhood program. What are the purposes of assessment? Well assessment provides teachers and parents with information about their child's growth and development. We can look at what their strengths are, we can also determine their areas of need. We can build upon those strengths when we are doing our planning and we're also doing individual planning for children, thinking about their areas of need. It informs our teaching practices. When we're doing our lessons, when we're thinking of activities to do in the classroom, we're thinking about these assessments and saying, well, I think many of the children need a little bit more information on their three-dimensional shapes. You're going to do some activities with three-dimensional shapes and you're going to document to see which children are really understanding and learning the information that you're giving them. It also can identify children's interests, which is very important when we are trying to teach topics because if a child is interested in dinosaurs, but they never come to a math or manipulative table or they never come to the art table. According dinosaurs in those areas, might draw that child in and they might do some math activities that they might not have done if you didn't put those dinosaurs in the interest areas. It also can help you identify special needs or concerns that might need further evaluation. Summative assessment, you hear mostly talk of summative assessment in elementary, middle, high schools. It's a onetime assessment. In New York State, they have the third grade ELA statewide tests and it's happens once a year, every year in third grade. Onetime assessment. But the issue with something like that is it just provides a snapshot of a children's learning. It doesn't show how they're learning, it doesn't show their development, is just a one day, here we go, this is what they can do on that day. What if they're not feeling well? What if they get yelled at in the morning? What if their best friend and them are having an argument? What if they didn't sleep well? What if they didn't eat breakfast? There are so many variables that can go into something like this, this onetime assessment that could maybe make a child not do as well as their potential. They cause a lot of pressure, stress and anxiety in children and also in teachers in schools. When we think of early childhood, summative assessment is not something that we practice. What we practice is called formative assessment. A formative assessment is continuous. It's all throughout the year. We're looking at their development. We're not just saying, yes on this day they know their shapes. Well, the next day they might not know them. We're looking at that as a continuous development for a child. It's individualized. We are looking at each child when we are determining their abilities, and that is important because then we can determine our activities based on these assessments. It's flexible. If a child is having a difficult day, we don't have to do any documentation for that child that day. Let them have a break. They might not be able to do the skills and be able to have the potential that they might if they were feeling better or if they're having a better day. Skip it. Don't do anything for that child that day. We need to think about the whole child. When we're doing assessments, we're assessing them in their social emotional skills, we're assessing their cognitive, we're assessing their physical skills and their language skills. We're thinking about the whole child in these assessments. It's not just academic skills that we'd look at. We use the data from these assessments to scaffold learning. Scaffolding is helping a child to reach their potential by maybe giving them a little assistance in areas that they need. That is really one of the major purposes of assessment. It's used to communicate children's development to families. Assessments aren't really important. The documentation is very important when you are talking to children's families and when we're going into parent conferences, you want to have information, you want to have documentation in front of you so you can show it to the parents. It's baseline, a strength-based approach. We are looking at the strengths of the child. We're trying to determine what are the strengths of this child and how can we use these strengths to work on their areas of needs? Successes are celebrated. We need to make sure that as we're doing these assessments, if a child is having a lot of difficulty in a certain area and they reach a milestone, tell the parents about it. Tell the child that what a great job that they have done in that area. Play-based assessment is what we should be looking at. We should be doing the assessment as the children are in their environment when they're playing. We can determine how high a child can count, sometimes just by watching them in a manipulative or math area, we can determine if they can sort by one or two attributes by watching them in their play, we don't have to pull them aside and ask them to do these tasks. There are lots of different types of assessment that you might be using in your classrooms. Rating scales, checklists, observations, running records, anecdotal notes, frequency counts, portfolios, and if you have a virtual way to save your information, you can do it that way also. I'm going to talk about each one of these individually, so a rating scale indicates the degree that a child possesses a trait or behavior. It's based on a continuum. When you maybe fill out a survey after going somewhere and you see the rating scale from 1-10, how well did we do? One being the least, 10 being the most. That's what a rating scale would be, where you're trying to determine where a child falls in a continuum for different tasks and abilities. Some examples that we use in my area, you might use different ones where you are, are the ECERS and the ITERS, which are environmental rating scales. One is for an early childhood classroom and one is for an infant toddler classrooms, so it helps you determine the classroom environment and has a lot of information in there. Then the Creative Curriculum is a child assessment that is used in a lot of the UPK programs on the universal pre-kindergarten programs in the New York State area where I'm. On the link here is an example of rating scale that you can go into and look at. Another type of assessment is a checklist. It's just a list of skills that you might observe. It's quick and easy to use. You can make your own depending upon the skills that you're looking for. Or you can buy premade ones. When you're doing this checklist, it's always important. Any assessment that you're writing the date down, a time might be a good idea, but writing the date down so you can determine when that you observe this, and if a child is developing. Examples of checklists might be a milestone checklist. Thinking about an infant, does the child rollover, and then you write the date that it happens and you just check it off and you go on to the next milestone. Observations. So observations are recorded documentation of what you see or hear. They're based on facts. They're not your opinion. They're not what you think you saw or what you think the child is feeling. They're just writing down the facts exactly what you see or hear so an example. Sue and Charlie are playing in the blocks. Charlie knocks over the structure they built. Sue builds it again. Charlie knocks it down again, and Sue leaves the block area. I don't have any of my own information in there. I don't know what the children are thinking unless they say exactly what they're thinking, I don't know what they're feeling, unless they put that into words so I'm not saying Sue is getting upset. I'm not saying Charlie thinks it's fun to knock the blocks down. I'm just writing exactly what I see. That's the observation that we want to do. We do not want to make it subjective where I'm putting my thoughts and ideas in there. If for the same situation, if I was putting my thoughts in there, I would say Sue is playing in the blocks with Charlie. They're not getting along because Charlie is bothering Sue. I don't know that for sure. I'm thinking that but there's no indication in words from either of the children that that is how they feel so we have to be really careful that we're writing just the facts, just what we see, and just what we hear and not injecting in there what we think that a child is feeling or what might be happening. Observation and documentation do's and don'ts. Always make sure that you're putting the date. I like I said, the time is a good idea. Setting might be another great idea. The last one before the setting was the block area. The child or the children involved so you need to put their names in there. Recording only the facts. Use quotation marks. If you're recording what a child says, write down exactly what they say. Don't change the grammar, don't change the verb tense. Write down exactly what the child says. Know what a child can do rather than what they cannot do. Remember we talked about the strength-based approach and keep a low profile so you're in the background, you're not involved in the situation when you're doing this documentation, you're an observer. The don'ts. Do not pressure children to perform so don't go in and say, hey, can you build this really big block structure and then write down what they're building. We're observing just in their natural play situations. Do not assume or state your opinion. Don't record anything you do not see. Do not label behaviors, actions, or feelings. We don't know what they are unless the child states them. Avoid using subjective bias or judgmental terms, exaggerations, conditional words. Do not summarize your writing exactly what is happening, and don't use generalization or vague terms. Running records is another type of assessment, and the goal here is to write everything that is seen and heard in order exactly as it occurs without adding comments or opinions so it highlights a children's behavior. You need to be descriptive and concise because you are writing quite a bit here sometimes that you don't have time to add extras, and it happens over a specific period of time. A running record, you might say is 10 minutes of writing down exactly what a child is doing, and you might do it the same time every day for a child so to determine where they are, what they're doing, what they're playing with. Another example there for you to look at. Anecdotal notes are direct observations of a child so these are like the observations that you might be writing about. A lot of times they might be funny stories that a child says or does something. When I was writing anecdotal notes a lot, it was fun to show the parents when they came in to pick up a child exactly what the child said or did at a certain time in the day. It's brief. It's only focused on one specific event or activity. Unlike the running record where you're doing it over a time frame. Here instead of an example, there's a video on how to write anecdotal notes. Frequency counts, or time samples, or event samples. It's used to gather information about a child. Many times you're using this to determine what their interests are, where they're playing in the classroom, or their behaviors. All it is is you have a paper, it might have a time stamp on at 1:00, 1:05, 1:10 all the way down and every time whatever it is that you're looking for happens, you just write a tally in there so you can determine how many times during a specific time frame that something is happening, and like I said, a lot of times we use this for behaviors to determine, and now if you have a child that hits a lot or bites a lot, you can determine how often it is happening. This does not tell you where or with who or what happened before or what happened after. It's just the number of times. Portfolios are such a great way to gather information on children in your classroom. Really it's using a lot of this documentation that you are collecting and putting it all together and looking at it, and you can determine child's development, you can determine their interests. You're not just throwing anything in there. Make sure it's thoughtful what you're adding, but you're also adding work samples. Work samples could be the artwork for the day. They could be a child trying to write their name. There could be cutting samples or drawings of shapes or pictures, any work that the child is doing you can collect that if they want to take it home, take a picture of it. You can put pictures in there. They can be digital, so you can use digital portfolios here. These were really great when I worked with young children, we would collect all of this information. We would use it for our assessments. We would use it to determine a child's progress and use it for the conferences with the parents, and then this was given to parents as their child left our classroom each year so they had a momento to take with them to show all of the things that their child did throughout the year. We can't talk about assessments without talking about red flags. Red flags are things that in the milestone checklists, if a child is not reaching, we might need to be concerned about. We just need to be careful that because developmental milestones are a guide for us, they're not set in stone. They're flexible, they're dependent upon a child's upbringing. We talked about the background knowledge and all of that. They're dependent on a child's where they're brought up and their culture and their experiences. We need to be careful with these red flags that we understand maybe why a child might not be reaching certain milestones, and if it is because of some of these influences, then that is something that we can work into our lessons. But if a child is not reaching one milestone in the language section, that is okay because every child develops differently. If a child is not reaching any milestones or many of the milestones in the language, then we might want to be looking at it a little bit more closely and be more concerned about it. It's something that you want to talk to the families about and it might end up that the child may be need to be referred for more evaluation. Be careful with these red flags and the milestones because they are flexible. The milestones, every child develops differently, and if we find that they are falling behind in a certain area, then that is where we need to put our emphasis with that child. They still do not develop in that area, then that would be considered a red flag and we would look more closely at it. Like I said before, I have a link right here to the CDC milestones. They're really great. They're printable versions that are pleasing to the eye and really easy to read. You can hand these out to parents. You could use these in your own assessment folders so you understand what the milestones are for each age group, and then there's also a little link to red flags here. Observation alone is not enough. We have to understand the significance of what we see, hear, and touch. It is really important for us to understand those milestones, to understand a child's development, to understands that child's where they're coming from, their culture, their experiences, their home life. All this information about the child is really important. The observation is important, but we only have to have all this background knowledge also about the child. Knowing those milestones is really important for the age group that you are working with. Because then you have a better idea of if a child is reaching those or not. Thank you.
