"Spotlight on Young Children: Observation and Assessment" by Holly Bohart and Rossella Procopio is a great resource for using assessments in your classroom. It gives a purpose, goes over purpose, gives solutions to how to incorporate observations and assessments in a way that works for the typical classroom. It is a useful guide for teachers who want to use formative assessment to guide their teaching.
Here is bit from the book:
Formative assessment is a critical piece of a balanced, comprehensive system of assessment for young children that also includes screening, diagnostic tests, and summative assessments (Riley-Ayers 2014).
When I was in the classroom I did lots of informative assessments. I made it part of Friday fun, but I also made sure that my support staff understood what we were assessing and could support me in the findings. Teaching staff who are building their skills in child assessment may benefit from targeted training such as Classroom-Based Assessment of Preschoolers - an online mini-course that addresses questions that teachers have about approaching assessment effectively.
Hope this helps.
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Lark Sontag
Community Engagement Manager
National Association for the Education of Young Children
Washington DC
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2019 01:24 PM
From: Sara Larsen
Subject: Observation/Documentation Organization
I would love to hear how other Early Childhood Educators organize their process of observing, documenting and assessing in their classrooms.
Streamlining the process of keeping track of objectives you have observed/need to look for, planning based on what you have seen, and creating a student rotation so you have sufficient documentation for each child are the main areas I am looking into. I strive to work smarter - not just harder - and would love to give additional suggestions to my teachers so they can do the same! Thanks for ANY input you may have on this topic.
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Sara Larsen
Concordia MO
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