ASSESSMENT

AN INTRODUCTION

VIRTUAL CLASS MEETING – MARCH 18, 2021

WHAT IS ASSESSMENT?

Assessment involves multiple steps of

collecting data on a child’s development and
learning, determining its significance in light
of the program goals and objectives,
incorporating the information into planning
for individuals and programs, and
communicating the findings to families and
other involved people.
WHY CONDUCT ASSESSMENT?

In general . . .

Assessment is important as it involves the

majority of the decisions you will make about
children when teaching and caring for them.
Your assessment decisions will direct and
alter children’s learning outcomes.
PURPOSES OF ASSESSMENT

CHILDREN
 Identify what children know
 Identify children’s special needs
 Determine appropriate placement
 Select appropriate curricula to meet children’s individual needs
 Refer children and, as appropriate, their families for additional services to
programs and agencies

FAMILIES
 Communicate with parents to provide information about their children’s progress
and learning.
Relate school activities to home activities and expectation.
PURPOSES OF ASSESSMENT

EARLY CHILDHOOD TEACHERS

 Identify children’s skills, abilities, and needs.
 Make lesson and activity plans and set goals.
 Create new classroom arrangements.
 Select materials.
 Monitor and improve the teaching-learning process.
Meet the individual needs of children.
Group children for instruction.
Report to parents about children’s developmental status and achievement.
PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT

1. Assessment should bring about benefits for children

Gathering accurate information from young children is difficult

and potentially stressful.

Assessment must have a clear benefit – either in direct services to

the child or in improved quality of educational programs.
PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT

2. Assessment should be tailored to a specific purpose and

should be reliable, valid and fair for that purpose.

3. Assessment policies should be designed recognizing that

reliability and validity of assessments increase with children’s
age.

Difficult to assess children’s abilities before age 6. Some

assessment should be done with necessary safeguards.
PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT

4. Assessment should be age appropriate in both content and

the method of data collection.
Assessment should address the full range of early learning and
development: physical well-being, motor, social, emotional,
language development
Methods of assessment should recognize that children need
familiar contexts to be able to demonstrate their abilities.

5. Assessment should be linguistically appropriate

6. Parents should be a valued source of assessment information.
Tools used in Assessment
• Tests
• Interview
• Portfolio
• Case History Data
• Play
• Observation
• Checklist &Rating Scales
• Rubric
OBSERVATION
• Observation is an authentic means
of learning about children.
• Most widely used assessment; an
excellent way to find out about
children’s behavior.
• Observation is defined as an
intentional, systematic act of
looking at the behavior of a child
or children in a particular setting,
program, or situation.
• Also known as “kid-watching”
 ADVANTAGES OF GATHERING DATA
THROUGH OBSERVATION
1. Enables professionals to collect information
about children that they might not otherwise
gather through other sources.

2. Ideally suited to learning more about children

in play settings (cooperative; social skills;
whether learning or not in play setting).
 ADVANTAGES OF GATHERING DATA
THROUGH OBSERVATION
3. Allows you to learn about children’s pro-social
behavior and peer interactions. Helps in
planning activities that will promote social
growth.

4 . Teachers can determine whether children’s

abilities are within a normal range of
development (gross and fine motor skills)
 ADVANTAGES OF GATHERING DATA
THROUGH OBSERVATION
5. Helps you provide concrete information for
use in reporting to and conferencing with
parents.
 STEPS IN CONDUCTING OBSERVATION

• Ask the questions who, what, where,

Plan for when, and how.
Observation
• Why you want to observe?

Conduct the • Be objective, be specific, and thorough as possible

observation • Record data: post-its/cards; video, tape recorder

Interpret
• Examine and organize information,
the Data make sense of what you have
written

Implement • Do something with the results

a Plan: Take
Action of your findings
 Mini Case

• Joshua, age 7, has been extremely restless and distractible in class.

Every few minutes, he is out of his desk, exploring something on a
bookshelf or looking out the window. When he’s in his seat, he kicks his
feet back and forth and drums his fingers on the table, shifts around and
generally keeps up a constant high level of movement. He may ask to
go to the bathroom three times in an hour. He speaks very quickly and
his ideas are poorly organized. During recess, Joshua is aggressive and
violates many of the playground rules.
 Mini Case

• Joshua’s mother corroborated the teacher’s description of Joshua with

similar stories about his behavior at home. Although Joshua is of normal
intelligence, he is unable to sustain concentrated attention on any one
activity for more than a few minutes.
 PURPOSES OF OBSERVATION: A CLOSER LOOK

UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR

• Young children are unable to clearly express themselves

• Most accurate ways to learn about children is to observe
them in daily activities
• Evidences of why they behave as they do is obtained
through on-the-spot recording
• Skilled observation is necessary to correctly determine what
is behind a child’s classroom behavior (misinterpretations
leads to difficulties for both the child and teacher.
 Mini Case: Bitoy

• Bitoy has had a “no good, very bad day” in the pre-school room in
Bulihan Child Care Center. His regular teacher was delayed for part of
the day and the substitute teacher was very impatient with him. First,
Bitoy’s father was late for work and he did not get to finish his breakfast.
Later, he bit a child, which is unusual behavior for him. He fussed and
cry and did not enjoy any of the play activities. By the time the regular
teacher arrived, the substitute was exasperated with Bitoy. The regular
teacher observed him for a few minutes and noticed that he was
drooling.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE TEACHER FOUND OUT?

 Mini Case: Bitoy

• When she checked his mouth, she discovered that a new tooth was
erupting. She put some ice in a clean cloth and let Bitoy suck on it.
Before his father returned to pick him up, Bitoy had been able to
participate in classroom play and story time.
 PURPOSES OF OBSERVATION: A CLOSER LOOK

UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR

Children communicate with teachers and adults through their/the:
 bodies (physical actions);
eyes;
quality of their voices;
Body postures;
Gestures;
Mannerisms;
Smiles;
Jumping up and down;
Listlessness (slowness/apathy)
***SEE CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR THROUGH THE EYES OF ITS MEANING TO THEM, FROM
THE INSIDE OUT, WE SHALL BE WELL ON OUR WAY TO UNDERSTANDING THEM.***
 PURPOSES OF OBSERVATION: A CLOSER LOOK

EVALUATING CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT

 Skilled observation of developmental domains requires a sound foundation in child
development (increases with experience).
 Necessary to aid the child in improving areas needing strengthening and make necessary
referral.

ASSESSMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

• Observation of play has been found more effective than testing for some
types of assessment.
TYPES OF OBSERVATION
• ANECDOTAL RECORD
- a written description of a child’s behavior. An
objective account of an incident that tells what
happened, when, and where.
TYPES OF OBSERVATION
• RUNNING RECORD
- more detailed narrative of a child’s behavior
that includes sequence of events; may be recorded
over a period ranging from a few minutes, weeks,
or months.
- may use to assess emergent literacy. (e.g. let
the child read and record errors and corrections as
the child read.
TYPES OF OBSERVATION

• SPECIMEN RECORD
- more detailed and precise than running
record.
- typically used by researchers
TYPES OF OBSERVATION

• Time Sampling
- record the frequency of a behavior for a
designated period of time.
- the observer decides ahead of time what
behaviors to observe, the time interval, and how
behavior will be recorded.
- The observer observe the behavior and records
how many times they occur.
TYPES OF OBSERVATION

• Event Sampling
- when a behavior tends to occur at a
particular setting.
- commonly used to determine causes or
results.
TYPES OF OBSERVATION
• Checklist and Rating Scales
- a checklist is a list of sequential behaviors arranged in
a system of categories; useful when many behaviors are to
be observed
- rating scale provides a means to determine the degree
to which the child exhibits a behavior or the quality of the
behavior (e.g. social skills).

• Audiotapes, Videotapes, and Cameras