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Steps for Success: Providing Extra Support When children are suspected of needing additional support, it is useful to gather specific information about what helps and hinders a child’s learning, then adapt curriculum accordingly. Observe children to identify their strengths, needs, interests, and learning styles. | Assessment is a systematic procedure for obtaining information from observation, interviews, portfolios, projects, tests, and other sources that can be used to make judgments about children’s characteristics. (NAEYC & NAECS/SDE, 2003.)(Slavin, 2000). |
Learning information is gathered in a number of ways: - Observe children in learning centers, during free choice time, meal time, and outside time.
- Identify children’s strengths and needs when reviewing early learning standards and benchmarks.
- Ask family members about their child’s strengths and needs, as well as their interests.
- Review curriculum-based assessments that are completed in conjunction with a curriculum. E.g. the Creative Curriculum Developmental Assessment Toolkit that accompanies the Creative Curriculum.
- Look closely at social emotional development, early language and literacy development and early mathematics development that research has identified as important for school success. Skills such as initiative, the ability to balance one’s own needs with others, vocabulary, recognition of the sounds of language, and number sense are some of the key learning areas for school success.
- Review children’s portfolios collected from everyday activities, such as drawings, pictures of block structures, and written notes of a child’s conversations.
As you gather children’s information, ask yourself the following questions: - What does each child do well? On what specific tasks and in what types of situations do these children seem to be struggling?
- How do these children learn best --- through seeing, hearing, or movement?
- What helps these children stay engaged in activities longer?
- What are their interests?
- What types of activities have been successful to facilitate learning in the past?
- What evidence-based teaching strategies could enhance these children’s progress?
The information gleaned from these answers will help you identify which areas of your curriculum strongly support children’s learning as well as potential areas for curriculum modifications. This information will help maximize success for children who are lagging behind or who show uneven or unexpected patterns of development. Your next step is to formulate learning and behavioral goals for these young students based on this information. NAEYC and National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECS/SDE) identified effectiveness indicators for assessment, which are summarized in the 2003 Joint Position Statement on Early Childhood Curriculum, Assessment and Program Evaluation.
Pertinent effectiveness indicators are listed below:
- What is assessed is developmentally and educationally significant
- Assessment evidence is used to understand and improve learning
- Assessment evidence is gathered from realistic settings and situations that reflect children's actual performance.
- Assessments use multiple sources of evidence gathered over time
- Staff and families are knowledgeable about assessment.
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