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CHILD ASSESSMENT

Child Assessment Tools

Carsyn Guitrau

Louisiana State University

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CHILD ASSESSMENT
Screener: Ages & Stages Questionnaire

General Description of Instrument

The ages and stages questionnaire is a parent/caregiver completed questionnaire. It is

used to identify children who could be at-risk for developmental delays and it is designed to

encourage parent involvement and education. The questionnaire has 3 scoring elements. The first

element is areas and questions. This consist of questions in regard to the 5 developmental areas;

communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal-social. Each area has 6

questions. These questions are scored either yes (10 points), sometimes (5 points), or not yet (0

points). The next element is the overall section. This section is not scored, and it looks at quality

of skills and parent concerns. The last element is the information summary. This element is a

summary sheet that has family/child information, total scores, overall responses, and follow-up

actions. The scores from the areas and questions element are transferred here. When transferring

these scores, the child will fall into either the white, gray, or black area. The white area means

that they are developing typically. The gray area means the child needs to be monitored and

screened again after a certain amount of time. The black area means that the child is at-risk for

developmental delays. Parents administer this tool in 3 steps; trying the items, scoring the

questionnaire, and getting results.

Reliability and Validity

The reliability of this screener comes from the large standardization sample. The ASQ-3

is the top screener to be studied which shows its validity. This ASQ is the 3rd edition, so the

technical data of this screener improved tremendously for reliability and validity. The reliability

score for test-retest are 0.92 and for inter-rater are 0.93. The validity score when from 0.82 to

0.88, which is an excellent improvement.

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Appropriately Administered Instrument

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iXqGFmPJYdAaOOkZOgzerGMKe29g5U41?

usp=sharing

Summary of Child Screener

The child shows strength in communication, gross motor, and problem solving. These 3

developmental areas all received a perfect score. The areas that the child did not receive perfect

scores on are fine motor and personal-social. One thing that the child needs help with is using a

writing utensil to draw shapes. The child received the score of “sometimes” for this question.

The other thing that the child need help with is putting toothpaste on the toothbrush and brushing

all of their teeth without help. The child also received the score of “sometimes” on this question.

In the overall section of the screener, the parent addressed areas of need for their child. An area

of need they put is that the child deals with articulation issues. The child needs help with

articulated the “s” and “r” sounds. Also, the child stutters when she gets excited. Another area of

need for this child is that child’s toileting habits. The child is not potty trained at night a dn

sometimes has accidents during nap time. A strength that the parent added in the overall section

is that the child has leadership skills.

Benefits/Limitations of Instrument

A benefit of this tool is that is covers almost all of the areas pertaining to child

development. It asks many questions in each area in order to get the whole picture of the child

and their development in each area. Another benefit of this tool is that it is completed before the

children begin school. This is a benefit because the early childhood educator will get to know

each child before school starts. A limitation of this tool is that it is scored by parents which could

result in scores being inaccurate due to parent bias.

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Child Assessment: TS Gold

General Description of Instrument

TS Gold is a child assessment tool that works with early childhood educators as they

teach children from birth through third grade. This tool is “committed to advancing the field of

early childhood education through high-quality, integrated resources; responsive, ongoing

support; and research-based, research-proved solutions that enable every early childhood

educator to open doors to lifelong learning” (Research, 2020). The core values of this tool are to

be innovative, responsive, collaborative, respectful, and ethical. This tool consist of 38 objectives

with covers 10 areas of development. The 10 areas of development are social-emotional.

physical, language, cognitive, literacy, mathematics, science and technology, social studies, the

arts, and English language acquisition. This tool in administered by early childhood educators in

their classroom. Early childhood educators observe and document for this tool every day. For

objectives, the educator can give the children a score of exceeding expectations (E), meeting

expectations (M), or progressing toward expectations (P). The educator can also add comment

under every objectivate. The tool is re-administered 4 times during the year to see the child’s

growth.

Reliability and Validity

The TS Gold assessment tools has an abundance of research to support its reliability and

validity. This tool relies on the educator and how they score and use their judgement. To make

the tool reliable, there is a Teaching Strategies Gold implementation training and an interrater

reliability certification that teachers complete before implementing the tool in their classroom.

Also, “At Teaching Strategies, our resources are not only research-based, they’re research-
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CHILD ASSESSMENT
proven – validated and shown to be effective by extensive research conducted by independent

researchers” (Research 2020).

Appropriately Administered Instrument

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iXqGFmPJYdAaOOkZOgzerGMKe29g5U41?

usp=sharing

Summary of Child Screener

The area of development that the child shows strengths is physical. The other areas of

development have both strengths and weaknesses. In social-emotional development, the child’s

area of need is solving social problems. In cognitive development, the child’s areas of need are

persisting, solving problems, showing curiosity and motivation, and recognizing and recalling.

For literacy development, the child’s areas of need are noticing and discriminating rhyme,

identifying and naming letters, and interacting during reading experiences. For mathematics

development, the child’s areas of need are counting, quantifying, understanding spatial

relationships, and measuring objects. All of these areas of need are objectives that the child

receives a score of “P” on. The child received one score of “E” in literacy development for the

objective “writes name”.

Benefits/Limitations of Instrument

A benefit of this tool is that it covers every single developmental domain. It also has

objectives under every domain to see exactly where the child is in their development. Another

benefit is that the tool is scored 4 times throughout the year. This is a benefit because it shows

the child’s growth throughout the whole year. Also, the tool has a place to score and a place to

add comments. The comment section is perfect for writing down exactly how the child met the

objective and allows the teacher to review when they score it again. A limitation of this tool is
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CHILD ASSESSMENT
that it does not have a scoring option to use if a child is not close to meeting the objective. The

tool assumes that every child is at least progressing toward the expectations of the objectives.

The tool should take into account developmental delays and have a scoring option that reflects

that.

DIBELS

General Description of Instrument

DIBELS, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, is a tool that assesses

early literacy skills in early childhood children. The purpose of this tool is to gauge the progress

of all students.

Reliability and Validity

Appropriately Administered Instrument

Summary of Child Screener

Benefits/Limitations of Instrument
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Reference Page

Research. (2020, October 06). Retrieved October 14, 2020, from

https://teachingstrategies.com/our-approach/research/