Standard 3: OBSERVING, DOCUMENTING, AND ASSESSING TO SUPPORT YOUNG CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

Key elements of Standard 3

3a: Understanding the goals, benefits, and uses of assessment -- including its use in development of appropriate goals, curriculum, and teaching strategies for young children

3b: Knowing about and using observation, documentation, and other appropriate assessment tools and approaches, including the use of technology in documentation, assessment and data collection.

3c: Understanding and practicing responsible assessment to promote positive outcomes for each child, including the use of assistive technology for children with disabilities.

3d: Knowing about assessment partnerships with families and with professional colleagues to build effective learning environments.

Personal Analysis

Within the context of this standard, I feel that I've grown so much since I began pursuing a career in early childhood education. When I first started my program at the University of Delaware, I was not very familiar with the different types of formative and summative assessment. Though I had many opportunities to observe and assess children as early as my freshman year, there were times when I was unsure of how and when to appropriately use assessment, what assessment methods I should use, and how to make my assessments as authentic as possible. Now that I have gained so much experience both in the classroom and in the field, I feel much more competent and prepared to effectively utilize assessment with my students.

Having had field experiences with such a variety of different age groups, I have been fortunate enough to experience assessment in many different forms. I have learned that assessment can look very different for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary-aged children. Being in each of these different placements has had such a positive impact on me because I was able to clearly see the benefits and uses of assessment in different settings. I saw how I can use it to learn more about individual children, my class as a whole, or the learning environment. Additionally, once I learned more about the children that I was working with I was able to use responsible assessment to promote positive outcomes for each child; whether it was through informal observations and anecdotal notes, IEPs, or assessments such as the core item (which is the artifact I chose for this standard).

My personal philosophy of education definitely has a connection to this standard. I believe in placing a strong emphasis on each child and supporting them by finding out how they learn best as an individual, which can be achieved by utilizing observation, documentation, and other appropriate assessment tools and approaches. Before student teaching, my philosophy was not as strong or specific. This most recent placement has given me the opportunity to refine my philosophy and reflect on what is most important to me as an early childhood educator. Since I have had more opportunities to use assessment during student teaching, it lead me to understand the goals, benefits, and uses of assessment.

Reflecting on my strengths and areas of need right now, they are different from when I first started. I believe I am significantly stronger at understanding the different types of assessment and different possible assessment methods, as well as when to use them. I have also improved a lot in applying assessment data to my planning and teaching in order to promote positive outcomes for each child. As for areas that I need to work on, I do feel that I can still improve upon my ability to differentiate instruction based on assessment data. I also would like to work on forming partnerships with families and professional colleagues to build effective learning environments.

Artifact: Core Item Assessment

1. Description

There are three artifacts included as attachments at the bottom of this page that I feel exemplify my competencies within this standard. Two are IEP documents (with fake names to maintain confidentiality) that I developed for two different students, one a pre-k student and the other a 5th grade student. The third artifact I chose that I feel best reflects my competencies for this standard and will discuss in depth is my core item assessment. This assignment was part of my fall student teaching placement as well as my professional development seminar. The purpose of the assignment was to provide me with additional experience collecting and analyzing assessment data for a common area of learning for all of the children in my classroom. It was also designed to assist me in making clear connections between research in a given area, my own observations of individual children, and planning. For my particular core item, I chose to focus on name writing with my kindergarten class of 22 students. The children came from a variety of backgrounds and socio-economic statuses, but no one had an identified disability. However, their prior educational experiences were varied as some had been to preschool and others had not; and thus the children demonstrated a wide range of name writing skills.

Once I chose my topic for the core item, I researched typical developmental progressions for writing, and created a rubric with the criteria of emergent, below proficiency, near proficiency, meets proficiency, and exceeds proficiency. Emergent writers could not form any letters of their name and were mostly still scribbling as writing. Students who were below proficiency were able to write their name but either the formation of some letters, the sequence, or the orientation of the letters was incorrect and they did not use correct capitalization. When students were near proficiency, they were able to accurately write each letter of their first name, but capitalization may still be inconsistent. By the time they reached proficiency, children could accurately write their first name with the letters in the correct form, orientation, and sequence, and correct capitalization was consistent. If any children exceeded proficiency, they demonstrated this by meeting all of the requirements for proficiency for both their first and last names. I conducted a pre- and post-assessment of each child in which they wrote their name on a sentence strip. The pre-assessment data was collected in the fifth week of my placement, and the post-assessment data was collected at the end of my time with the class around week eleven. I also researched the best ways to target and teach these skills, and planned and implemented activities to help the children achieve the learning goal of being able to write their name proficiently. After the pre- and post-assessments and each activity I taught, I collected work samples from each child to document where they fell on the rubric at that point in time. I assessed each student's abilities from the pre-assessment to the post-assessment and reflected on factors that may have impacted their progress. I also reflected on the strengths and limitations of my assessment as well as implications for future assessment if I were to remain in the classroom.

2. Analysis

To me, the core item I have chosen as my artifact perfectly represents standard 3 and its key elements. This assignment gave me the opportunity to observe, document, and assess my student's progress toward my learning goal in order to support their name writing skills.

Key element 3a of this standard is understanding the goals, benefits, and uses of assessment; including its use in development of appropriate goals, curriculum, and teaching strategies for young children. Through the completion of my core item assessment, I was able to gain these understandings and incorporate them within my assignment. I was also able to see how the goals, benefits, and uses of assessment all connected. My goal with this core item was for my students to be able to write at least their first name using the correct formation of each letter, having all letters in the correct orientation and sequence, and using proper capitalization. This goal was the guiding factor that lead the creation of my rubric, activities, and pre- and post-assessments. Once I began to implement my activities and collect work samples as assessment data, I was able to see the benefits of my activities and assessment over time as children were able to improve their name writing skills from the time of the pre-assessment to the post-assessment. Additionally, as I collected my assessment data, I was able to modify my teaching to select specific strategies that would support both individuals and groups of learners.

Elements 3b and 3c for this standard can both be seen in this artifact through the research I did on the best ways to target and teach these skills to children. I then applied this research to the classroom by targeting these specific skills in developmentally appropriate and effective ways, so that I could support positive outcomes for each child. I also realized that it is important to target not only the stage at which the child is currently performing, but also the next stage so that you can scaffold the child’s learning and help him or her progress to the next stage of writing. Additionally, it is important to look at each individual child’s needs, because they could be struggling with forming the letters, capitalization, or matching the letters to their sounds; or perhaps everything is perfect except for the fact that they’re writing everything reversed from right to left. By focusing on the individual instead of the overall skill or stages writing, you can determine what specifically needs to be targeted and how to scaffold them from there. I also made sure to make my assessment as authentic as possible. During my activities I used different materials such as dry-erase markers and boards, which improved engagement for many students and in turn led to evidence of better work. Similarly, by collecting data from a range of activities and group structures, I was able to appeal to different types of learners and thus make my assessment more authentic by collecting more reliable data.

The last element of standard 3 was more difficult for me to address with this artifact. Element 3d involves knowing about assessment partnerships with families and with professional colleagues to build effective learning environments, which was more of a challenge for me, especially when it came to families. The assignment did not call for family involvement in the assessment process, and even though I had some opportunities to engage and interact with families during my time with this class, I did not have any opportunities to engage the families in this particular experience. This is something that I would have done differently if I had the chance, or would try to improve upon in the future. As for partnering with professional colleagues to build effective learning environments, my clinical educator throughout this placement was an excellent partner and always supported me in my teaching. For the purpose of my core item assignment, he suggested that I develop my rubric with the same levels of proficiency that the school uses for progress reports. We also worked together to co-teach some learning experiences for my assessment, and I collected some work samples from activities that he planned and taught that did not focus specifically on my learning goal, so that I could still see the progress the children were making. Even though this was an individual assignment for me as a student teacher, partnering with my clinical educator for some aspects of my assessment and using him as a resource when needed made my assessment that much stronger.

3. Reflection

Overall, I believe that this experience in assessment was very successful and effective. I was able to make connections between research-based best practices, my own observations and assessment data, and my planning. Even though there were differences among students' progress in that some students started out proficient while others may not yet have reached proficiency, the ones who remained at the same level made small improvements to keep them at that level whereas other students started out at a lower point but showed tremendous growth from the pre-assessment to the post-assessment. It was evident that my activities and learning experiences focusing on these name writing skills had a positive impact on the children and enabled me to scaffold their learning and support them in reaching a higher skill level. By the time I left my placement, I felt that each child, whether they had started the year proficiently writing their name or had started the year not even knowing most of the letters in their name, was more confident in their ability to accurately write their name using the required skills that we had learned.

My personal philosophy of education definitely influenced some of the decisions I made pertaining to this assignment. I believe in placing a strong emphasis on each child and supporting them by finding out how they learn best as an individual. Therefore, Not only did I plan whole and small group activities to teach toward my learning goal, I also paid specific attention to the individual needs of my students and worked with them one-on-one to give them individual support and strategies for them to be successful. It was clear through the pre- and post-assessments as well as the many work samples I collected in-between that there was much differentiation among individual students’ skill levels and needs when it came to this learning goal. If I were to continue my assessment of this core item and modify it, I would make it even more individualized to fit each child's needs. In addition, it seems that the majority of my students were able to progress from wherever they started to at least being “near proficiency,” which means that capitalization was a common factor that many children still struggle with. Therefore, further activities and assessments could focus more in-depth on this specific area to help more children meet proficiency.