Childrens Progress in a Learning Environment - Essay Example

www.academia-research.com Sumanta Sanyal Date: Assessment Strategies in Early Childhood Settings Abstract The study is of assessment of five children in a very small setting that is commonly known as child minding here in the UK. The assessment requirements as well as criteria have been studied and various learning strategies that are supplemented by the various modes of assessment have been mentioned. The two modes of assessment – writings and products like audio and videotapes and their various utilities in the assessment of the learning progress of the children have been mentioned. The assessment report ends on a happy note with mention made of the extreme satisfaction to be derived from the minding of such small children in such a cosy setting. Self Background I work in a very small setting with four children aged 3-4. Two are girls and two boys beside my own baby girl aged 4. I mind the children from 12: 00 noon to 6 pm Monday to Friday. This is called “Child Minding” here in England and it is similar to a Day Care Nursery and School but on a very small scale. I fetch the children from local nurseries at 12: 00 noon and their parents collect them at 6 pm. For the 6 intervening hours it is my job to care for the children by keeping them safe and occupied. I take them to a playground, engage them in play and entertainment activities either at my setting or in the playground. I also look after their food and toilet needs. This is similar to a nursery school but, as I have mentioned earlier, on a much smaller scale. I am governed by Ofsted at www.ofsted.gov.uk. I shall expound upon how I assess the children’s achievements during the time they spend with me. The Need for Assessment Assessment of children’s progress in a learning environment is very necessary to enable the instructor to gauge the level of development each child has achieved for each particular learning program or set of programs. Assessment of such achievements may be short-term for immediate judgement and action or for the long-term to determine if the child is on the right learning trajectory into his or her future. Assessment can evolve the following benefits. Gather relevant background information on each child so that better learning strategies can be fitted to the child’s special needs, if any, and generally to each child’s needs, which are common with other children in the group. Children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds can be fitted into general learning programs better with assessment of their specific needs. In this particular case such a necessity was not there as the children were all from a homogenous linguistic and cultural background. Assessments can be utilised to report each child’s progress in the learning programs to other shareholders in the child’s equity – government bodies and parents. It can reveal special needs in children with exceptional or disabled faculties and enable placement decisions to the child’s best interests in future learning environments. No-one exceptionally enabled or disabled has featured in my little group yet. Assessment can help families in identifying special concerns, resources and priorities. Such concerns, resources and priorities can then be indulged in through special programs designed to gear the child to such special familial needs, as is possible with my little group. Regular assessment enables creation and maintenance of proper records of each child’s progress in the featured group program. Assessment also enables the service-provider, me in this case, to evaluate services provided with parents and other authorities – the Ofsted (CEC Knowledge and Skill base). Initial Assessment The child’s progress should be monitored right from the beginning of the development stage in the early setting environment. In my case, as I am the practitioner, I assessed each child I introduced to my particular setting, including my own girl, before starting out on learning strategies for them. Before I agreed to take them into my setting I asked the parents to meet with me and discuss how their child has been developing at home. One of the boys, aged 3 and named Roy, was solely in charge of his grandma as his parents were unavailable for his upbringing for diverse reasons. His grandma told me that Roy was normally intelligent and emotionally stable. Fortunately it was the same, including for my girl. They were all normally intelligent and emotionally stable. I could assess this from their guardians’ accounts of how they did at home both at learning tasks and routine ones they have already mastered (Aims for the Foundation Stage). Foundation Stage Curriculum I set up a foundation stage curriculum for the children. It is the foundation stage as the children I was dealing with were all below 5 years and this was very early stage learning. The curriculum, in a gist, constituted the following learning agenda to help support, foster, promote and develop the children’s learning qualities. It must be noted here that it is not only necessary to assess the children’s successful induction of particular learning tasks, such as painting a tiger right, but it is also necessary to assess what long-term learning trajectory the child is on so that future learning tendencies can be monitored and assisted guidance can be provided to prod it in the right direction where the right direction is the child’s proneness to learn whatever is correct in a continuous and sustained fashion. The most important thing is to foster a positive long-term disposition to learn (Carr & Claxton, 2004). I promote personal, social and emotional well-being of the children by ensuring that the transition into my setting is facilitated and an inclusive ethos is provided so that the children’s capacities to utilise learning opportunities is maximally exercised within a co-operative environment both with peers and me, as the instructor, and the parents back at home as an extension of the same learning process. I constantly strive to foster positive attitudes and dispositions towards learning so that the children acquire an enthusiasm for knowledge and become confident that they can be successful learners. I strive to foster a feeling of co-operation so that the children learn to get along with each other and the larger community within which they live. I teach them to concentrate on learning tasks, whether in single fashion or in groups. I teach them communication skills so that they learn to use an ever-extending vocabulary to successfully convey their needs and fulfilments to adults and to each other. I teach them to use books and other print materials to derive both pleasure and knowledge from them in different contexts. I teach them mathematics so that they acquire an understanding of number, measurement, pattern, shape and space and interact with each other in these contexts, which I vary often to allow them to gather experience from varying topicality. I promote knowledge and understanding of the world so that the children learn to solve problems, make decisions, experiment, predict, plan and question in a variety of contexts. I also teach them the significance of places both within their immediate ambit and those they may hear of and learn about. I give them certain physical education so that they better understand how their bodies work and how they can keep both fit and healthy. I teach them to be creative and share their thoughts, ideas and feelings with others so that their creative latencies are recognised, fostered and reified (Aims for the Foundation Stage). Assessment Techniques Assessment of the achievements of preschool children like those in my setting should not be done with standardised paper and pencil tests. Instead, their development and growth can be documented through collections of their work in portfolios. These portfolios can be made up of work samples, drawings, samples of their writings, photographs and audio and/or videotape recordings. Also, observation of children should be made while they are at play or engaged in any other daily activities. There are also certain developmentally appropriate, systematic assessment tools that are available at scholastic establishments that are also appropriate for assessment (Draft 12, 2004). The results of the assessments should be disclosed and discussed with the parents so that they can also participate in their children’s development and assist in it through they involvement at home. Inspectors from Ofsted should also be acquainted with the documents, as it is required by the agency that, in the first place, grants the right to child mind here in the UK. Individual Portfolios These are specific content area items collected at specific intervals. These may be writing samples, drawings, problem solving using numbers, and other unique items that show learning style, interests and unique style of individual children (Example of Documentation). All five children in my setting could draw rudimentarily. I have collected samples of drawings from all of them at two weeks intervals for three months. For each child there are approximately six sets of drawings. These are very good indicators of how much children comprehend the attributes of objects in their immediate and large environment. Thus, drawings of common birds and animals like sparrows, crows, cats and dogs reveal how much the children are aware of the environment they live in. Drawings of more exotic animals like tigers and lions reveal how much the children comprehend the larger world around them and what attributes they have picked up about such objects in the world at large. The continuous collection of samples over a three-month period reveals the development continuum of each child as he or she progresses along the learning curve. I have also used drawings to allow the children to get an inkling of geometric shapes and almost all of them have become fairly well-acquainted with the basic shapes like circle, straight line, square, etc. I have supplemented these drawings with allowing them to play with containers with different shaped holes into which different shaped objects have to be inserted successfully. Almost all of them have become fairly adept at these games and thus, they have acquired a first-hand knowledge of basic geometric shapes (Draft 12, 2004). I have also collected samples of basic alphabetical and numerical writings, simple words, scraps of sentences, scribblings and shape drawings over the same interval and period. There were also spellings written down of simple daily-use words and drawings labelled with appropriate words. Both drawings and writings helped me to assess the following of the children. How they could experiment and work with writing tools such as pencils, crayons, markers, chalk and the computer keyboard. How well they comprehend spoken and otherwise perceived expressions which they than can represent through drawings and writings. How well they use scribbling and drawing to represent their own ideas. This has also been assessed through words they have used to represent their drawings. How well they can convey messages from themselves through drawings and scribbling. How well they can write their own, their parents’ and peers’ names with experimentation with different writing tools. How motivated, engaged and eager they are to participating in writing exercises. How well they can use environmental print (labels, signs and general print around them) to help in their writing as well as asking for assistance from parents and myself in writing short pieces and stories. I have also incorporated efforts in drawing exercises that demonstrate how each child is ready to cooperate and collaborate with its peers in these exercises. These experiments were heart-warmingly successful and demonstrated that the child learned better together than singly. Cooperative efforts enabled children to share ideas and generate new ones from intermingling with each other. The numerical writings demonstrated how well they could understand numbers and count, describe order and compare them. The geometric drawings showed how well they could understand simple shapes and correlate them with everyday objects (Draft 12, 2004). Product Portfolios I had assessed the children’s other learning progress through audio and videotapes. The audio tapes contained recordings of readings, recitations of short pieces of poems and stories. There were also stories that they themselves had made up both singly and in cooperative attempts with both peers and parents and myself. The video tapes were exclusively of the children themselves dressed up. They had chosen their own dresses and had put them on by their own efforts. This was singular in that two or three of them, when they arrived at my setting, did not know how to tie shoelaces and unbutton dresses. I assessed the following from these products. The situations for the recordings were diverse, both in my classroom and the playground in the park. How well the children listened to, identified, and responded to environmental sounds, directions and conversations and how phonologically aware they were. How well they could communicate both their own thoughts and ideas and those they had learned through multiple perceptions under diverse circumstances. The audiotapes also demonstrated how well the children could attune themselves to rhythm in song and poetry. The videotapes contained clips of them dancing and singing and these also demonstrated how well they could adapt to both rhythm, words and music. How well the children could cope with both play and learning activities since these were represented both in sound and vision on the tapes. It also demonstrated how well they could represent themselves physically in the presence of others. The tapes also had recordings of cooperative efforts with the children singing and dancing together as well as playing games in a cooperative endeavour. These further demonstrated their abilities to understand and enact perceived phonological and rhythmic connotations in joint efforts (Draft 12, 2004). Conclusion It has been a heartening experience assessing the developments of these very small children’s as they progress through a learning trajectory that gradually leads them to a wholesome future. References Aims for the Foundation Stage. Extracted on 11th December, 2005, from: http://www.surestart.gov.uk/_doc/0-601298.pdf#search='Aims%20for%20the%20Foundation%20Stage' Carr, M., & Claxton, G., A framework for teaching learning: the dynamics of disposition, Early Years, Vol. 24, No. 1, p. 87-97, March 2004. CEC Knowledge and Skill Base for All Beginning Special Education Teachers of Early Childhood Students. Extracted on 11th December, 2005, from: http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/ecdr/PDF_forms/descrip.of.compet.homepage.pdf#search='CEC%20Knowledge%20and%20Skill%20Base%20Early%20Childhood' Examples of documentations in early childhood classrooms. Extracted on 11th December, 2005, from: http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v2n1/helm/table1.html#veg The South Dakota Early Learning Guidelines, Draft 12, August, 2004. Extracted on 11th December, 2005, from: http://www.usd.edu/sdaeyc/guidelines.pdf Read More