Research Observing, Documenting, and Assessing to Support Young Children and Families
Observations are part of every day to solar day life of an early babyhood educator. About child care providers understand the role of observation but do they sympathise why it'southward of import? Early babyhood pedagogy [ECE] is not just almost instruction children, it's about exploration, learning, and observing play. Educators play an of import role in helping children encounter developmental milestones and through ascertainment is how educators learn more about each and every child they work with.
Observation is often seen as one of the near simple, however constructive methods of assessing young children every bit they develop. For an early childhood educator, observing a child begins by noting how each child behaves, learns, reacts to new situations, and interacts with others. An educator and so takes this data and creates activities to promote growth on skills, document the success of those skills, so reflect and assess.
What is ascertainment in early babyhood pedagogy? 🤔
Observation in ECE is the process of tracking children'due south behavior over a period of time. Through meaningful and detailed documentation, educators are able to run across patterns and plan age-appropriate activities, gain insight into how a child thinks about the world, and provide opportunities for educators to change the surround to promote growth and development.
Why do we find children's development? 🧐
When a teacher sits dorsum and observes a child within their intendance, the educator tin and so better sympathise the children's strengths or weaknesses. Through observations, educators' programming can help make improvements to the environment and facilitate learning.
Ascertainment of a child's behavior can:
- Help an educator amend understand why a kid might be having challenging beliefs
- Identify special needs
- Amend understand the child
- Allows for documentation of skills
- Shows the child's communication style
- What their interactions with their peers are like
Ascertainment or the process of information technology has a focus on how – How did the child go there vs. than the product the child used. The observation procedure is very straight frontwards: Observe and reflect, document and gather evidence, Plan and human action, and finally assess. Yous but assess over long periods of fourth dimension. Typically once every six months depending on the type of assessment you are using.
What are the types of documentation? 📋
Having evidence of skill growth helps gain improve insight into where a child is at. Having meaningful interactions when a child is playing can allow for the projection to continue over long periods of time and keeping the child'due south involvement up.
- Written observations with language samples. Example: Bobby is edifice with the blocks. He is stacking all the square blocks and then topping off with a triangular block. When I asked Bobby what he was creating his response was "This is my house, considering it has a point at the top"
- Drawings or attempts of writing – grab that picture before information technology ends up in the recycle
- Pictures of constructions – Take a moment to capture that creation before tidy uptime
- Videos – Videos can be so powerful and if yous are using digital documentation information technology's much easier to catch those moments
- Learning stories with direct links to skills – Typically add a picture and tagged with a skill from your framework
Observations also help build on the progress reports – Typically centers volition accept an ongoing tracking of the kid'south skills and evolution and report back to families. This is the step before going into an assessment.
What practice educators runway?🔀
Educators look to assistance grow the child every bit a whole and desire to encourage growth and development of skills in all areas. The primary areas of focuses are on:
Cognitive development
Physical development
Social development
Emotional development
Linguistic communication and literacy evolution
Depending on the fashion of teaching or curriculum there may be other areas of focus merely these will ever be central areas of focus. Each of these areas of evolution impact i another and when a child is learning and playing
Observations and assessments📓
You've been gathering observations, changing the environs effectually, and providing meaningful activities to promote growth, at present what? Well as the children acquire more skills and arrange to different situations, you lot have testify gathered to evidence this. Through pictures and written observations that you have gathered over time, it's at present time to reverberate on all this hard work and appraise. Assessments tin't be done without evidence and observations are a huge slice of prove. Now there are many different types of assessments yous can choose to do, merely make sure yous have been trained on how to assess properly. Some assessments are as elementary as a checklist and some require certification. Too, brand sure the assessment you use is canonical to be used in your area and also ties to the values and teaching style of your center.
Connect with Parents👨👨👧
The final piece to observations is bringing this information back to parents and working with them directly to make sure the child is supported both at habitation and in the classroom. Having meetings with parents to non simply discuss any ongoing problems or problems simply also to program what the goals are for their child and understanding the role a teacher plays in a kid'due south life. With a good working relationship with parents, a child tin can be very successful.
Tying these all together is no easy task and for many educators, it is very fourth dimension consuming, but it is a very important piece. Many centers have made the switch to HiMama because of this. Within the app, teachers can tag skills, observe, reflect, and then assess using work sampling or ounce. All the while sharing updates with families! Today with COVID-19 on the doorstep, having open up communication with parents is very important every bit many can not come within the heart to observe how the classroom is growing.
Related Posts
- Why Detect Children at Play?
- Types of Child Care Ascertainment
- How to Make Health and Health Observations in Early Educational activity
- Child Care Observation: How Much Documentation is As well Much?
Originally published in Jan 5, 2016. Updated by Ria Simon. Photograph Source – University of Alaska.
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Source: https://www.himama.com/blog/assessing-toddler-development-through-observation/
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