Spotlight on Young Children: Observation and Assessment, Volume 2

Introduction

Hilary Seitz

A few giggling girls, a couple of chatting children, and one questioning kindergartner all greet me as I enter Jesse Perez’s kindergarten and first grade classroom in Anchorage School District. It is the district-mandated literacy block time, and most of the 24 children are working on a phonological awareness activity using letters printed on small squares of paper to match beginning sounds with picture cards. Several small groups of children are seated at round tables. Some children are working independently, others in pairs or triads. As I walk by a table, two children jump up to show me their letter-picture matches. Another child asks me to sit next to her, shows me a picture of a thimble, and asks what it is. Around the room, I see and hear children reading, naming, and sounding out letters; identifying pictures out loud; holding pencils with a pincer grasp; smiling at and talking with each other; and making connections with the word or picture. Each child appears to have a sense of agency and purpose and feel comfortable and safe in this environment.

Jesse sits with four children in a small circle on the carpet. She asks each child questions about the letter sounds and records their answers on a clipboard. Meanwhile, a teaching assistant walks around the tables, writing short comments on yellow Post-it notes.

In this vignette, both the teacher and the teaching assistant are observing and assessing multiple behaviors and skills during this literacy block. They document the children’s learning with informal observations, such as who is working together or independently, and with assessments of specific skills associated with phonological learning. Some of the informal observations are intentional while others are chance observations of behaviors and skills.

During this brief experience, Jesse takes note of the following informal observations:

Child-initiated experiences, or what a child chooses to engage in

Work preferences, or which children prefer to work by themselves and which are more interested in a social interaction

Behaviors, or how attentive and self-directed children are while engaging in tasks and how collaborative and supportive they are to other children

Abilities, or which children need more challenging work and which need additional help

Ideas and interests, or what children connect with

The teacher is also able to document formal observations and assess learning, such as

A specific child’s progress on a speech and language Individualized Education Program (IEP) goal

Reading progress and abilities related to specific skills (e.g., sounds that letters are making, letters and sounds that go together in words) on a state-required literacy assessment

Developmental screening tools that document milestones, such as motor skills needed to hold a pencil

The list could go on depending on what other information Jesse wishes to learn or record on any given day.

Intentionally listening to children, watching their actions and behaviors during authentic learning experiences, and then documenting those observations helps her learn about all of the children she teaches. Observations like these provide Jesse with evidence to guide curriculum, learning experiences, and teaching strategies that support her class as a whole as well as each and every child as an individual, including specific considerations for children who may have disabilities or special needs or who speak more than one language. Multiple observations help teachers understand all learners better.

In today’s world of data collection, high-stakes testing, and accountability, it is vitally important to understand effective ways to assess young children in familiar settings and to communicate this information with staff, families, and communities (Moses 2023). There are varying assessment strategies and tools for different age groups. For an infant, a teacher may use a formal checklist of developmental areas; for a 3-year-old, a teacher may take photos to accompany their noted observations of development; for a kindergartner, a teacher may oversee a kindergarten readiness state assessment. Applying a variety of observation, documentation, and authentic assessment tools and methods with children supports a developmentally appropriate curriculum and helps to tell the whole story of a child’s abilities through a strengths-based approach (NAEYC 2020).

Carrying on the work of Spotlight on Young Children: Observation and Assessment (Bohart & Procopio 2018), this book explores how to use observation, documentation, and assessment in early learning settings that serve children from birth through age 8, featuring current research and context on these essential topics. This collection of articles from NAEYC’s Young Children journal and Teaching Young Children magazine provides readers with fundamental ideas and practical strategies to observe and assess children in their authentic learning environments using informal and formal assessments with intentionality.

This volume highlights aspects of observation and assessment in three distinct parts.

Part One: Purposes of Observation and Assessment showcases a variety of reasons why educators use observation and assessment, with information about the foundations and meanings behind them. These articles address how educators learn to see children’s thinking, learning, development, and engagement.

Part Two: Strategies for Observing and Assessing provides methods that highlight different facets of the authentic assessment process and how to capture thinking and learning moments.

Part Three: Assessment Practices to Support Inclusion addresses reflecting on, celebrating, and including all children. These articles feature information on identifying children’s unique strengths and needs, observing classrooms, and using a variety of strategies that support all children.

Each article is accompanied by reflection questions to connect and apply the ideas to your own teaching context. The entire collection demonstrates the critical roles observation and assessment play in the early learning setting. This extensive information and the authors’ innovative strategies will guide you to better see and address how each and every child you work with is learning.

REFERENCES

Bohart, H., & R. Procopio 2018. Spotlight on Young Children: Observation and Assessment. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Moses, A. 2023. Developmentally Appropriate Assessment Practices: Gathering, Understanding, and Using Information. Young Children 78 (1): 4–5.

NAEYC. 2020. Developmentally Appropriate Practice. Position statement. Washington, DC: NAEYC. www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/dap.

About the Editor

Hilary Seitz, PhD, is director for educator and leadership programs in the California State University system. She advocates and supports statewide efforts to support early childhood education and the new California PK–3 Early Childhood Education Specialist Instruction Credential. Dr. Seitz is professor emerita in early childhood education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research areas have been in early literacy development, collaborative practices between families and schools including culturally responsive pedagogies, emergent curriculum development, documentation, authentic assessment, and social constructivist learning theories inspired by Reggio Emilia practices.

The photograph in this chapter comes from Getty Images.

PART ONE

Purposes of Observation and Assessment

Observing, documenting, and assessing each child’s development and learning are essential processes for educators and programs to plan, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of the experiences they provide to children (NAEYC 2020, 19). To use observation and assessment effectively with young children, you must first understand the purposes and foundations of observation and assessment. Teachers, administrators, and families need to consider what assessment is and how it can be used in the early learning setting with different age groups (e.g., infants, toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners, primary grade children). Documentation provides the stories and evidence of learning and helps to make learning visible.

The three articles in this part share insights into various purposes of observation and assessment, laying the foundation for a comprehensive system of observation, assessment, and documentation.

To begin, Catherine Scott-Little, with Kathy L. Reschke, defines assessment, introduces key concepts, and provides concrete steps about how to use authentic assessment in your classroom in Foundations of Assessment for Preschool Settings.

Meaningful Assessment and Documentation: How Directors Can Support Teaching and Learning, by Debbie LeeKeenan and Iris Chin Ponte, helps readers understand the responsibilities that directors have when overseeing programs and guiding teachers. This article presents an overview of the various aspects of assessment and includes many examples.

Natacha Ndabahagamye Jones, Amber T. Fowler, and Jennifer Keys Adair authored the third article, Assessing Agency in Learning Contexts: A First, Critical Step to Assessing Children. In it, they describe ways to look for and document learning in children, with a particular emphasis on the value of children’s agency.

REFERENCE

NAEYC. 2020. Developmentally Appropriate Practice. Position statement. Washington, DC: NAEYC. www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/dap.

Foundations of Assessment for Preschool Settings

Catherine Scott-Little, with Kathy L. Reschke

Four-year-old Bre is quite verbal and expresses her ideas with a lot of confidence, but her teacher, Ms. Dhawan, has concerns about Bre’s early math skills. For example, Bre says number words but not in the correct order (One, four, six). According to the state early learning standards, by the end of preschool, children should demonstrate one-to-one correspondence to 20, name the number of objects in a set of five, and recognize and sort basic shapes. Ms. Dhawan has noticed that Bre has room for growth in each of these mathematics skills.

Ms. Dhawan enriches Bre’s day with a feast of mathematics learning opportunities focused on her interests indoors and outside. For example, during outdoor time, the teacher observes that Bre sorts and even makes a pattern with leaves. Inside, the teacher adds materials to create a family area restaurant, which offers Bre and her peers many opportunities to count and incorporate mathematical thinking. Ms. Dhawan also asks Bre’s grandmother about Bre’s interests and strengths at home. They talk about how Bre loves to accompany her grandmother to the grocery store and about opportunities to strengthen Bre’s understanding of math while shopping.

Ms. Dhawan’s observations and review of assessment data help her recognize that Bre needs more intentionally planned math experiences, starting with her interests and what she already knows and can do. Ms. Dhawan regularly observes and documents Bre’s work and challenges her as she gains new skills. Along the way, she uses the state’s standards to understand how mathematical skills develop and to expand and individualize her teaching. By the end of the year, Bre meets and exceeds all of the indicators for preschool children.

Contributed by Amanda Bryans

As shown in the opening vignette, preschool educators have many things to consider and do when it comes to assessment. In this article, we define assessment and offer important considerations for assessment in early childhood education. This article is an excerpt from our chapter in Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth Through Age 8, Fourth Edition. More extensive examples and guidelines can be found in the chapter.

What Is Assessment?

Assessment is a systematic means of collecting and documenting information about children’s learning and development to monitor children’s progress toward learning goals, make curriculum decisions, and improve teaching practices. Early childhood educators use the assessment process to gather information about what children know and are able to do in order to understand their development and support their progress toward learning goals. They use this information to make informed decisions about teaching and about services for children. The process involves three steps.

Step 1: Gathering information about children’s learning and development is done through a variety of means. Educators observe children throughout the day, talk with them, and carefully consider what children are doing and saying. These informal observations play a key role in understanding children’s learning and progress toward developmental and educational goals. Educators also learn about children by using assessment tools, which are specific measures used to collect information about children. (See "Authentic and Meaningful Developmental Screening in Early Childhood" for more.)

Step 2: Documentation is the important step of recording what is observed or learned through the assessment process. Documentation can be done by writing down observations (through anecdotal notes or other means), recording children’s answers/responses to specific tasks on forms, filling out checklists, taking pictures or videos of children’s accomplishments, or other means of capturing information about children.

Step 3: Reflection is the process of looking at the information that has been documented, thinking about what it means about the child, and making decisions about learning experiences and interactions that would best support the child’s development. Reflection can take place individually or with coteachers and family members and, depending on the situation, with the children who are being assessed.

Each of these steps is necessary for teachers to understand, make decisions about, and support children’s learning and development. Because each of these three steps is essential to the process, we use the term assessment to refer to this full three-step process. Although assessment is a step-by-step process, it’s also a process that is ongoing—to effectively assess children’s growth and development, the steps are repeated over time to build understanding of the child’s progress.

Assessment Methods in Early Childhood Education

Educators, like Ms. Dhawan in the opening vignette, draw on a variety of developmentally appropriate assessment methods to gain a fuller picture of a child’s development and learning. Assessment methods range from anecdotal or unplanned opportunities, where an educator observes what a child says and does during daily activities, to formal procedures that must be carried out the same way with each child. Anecdotal observations that educators make naturally as part of daily routines and learning experiences are an important source of information to inform the assessment process and to better understand children’s interests, knowledge, and skills. Sometimes these observations are spontaneous, such as when a child asks a question or does something that an educator happens to notice. For instance, an educator might observe that a preschooler uses a new word during lunchtime. Other times educators may plan specific activities to give children a real-world task where they can demonstrate their knowledge or skills. For example, an educator might ask a child to count out a certain number of crayons to see if they are able to count and group objects.

Educators also use assessment tools to help them gather and document information about children, and these tools generally fall into one of two broad categories or types.

Informal assessment tools: This type of assessment tool enables educators to collect information about children’s knowledge and development using a specified process but with latitude about how the assessment process is carried out. They are systematic but do not have to be done in exactly the same way with each child, and they may include observations of children during routine activities or as they participate in designated activities designed to document learning. Examples include ratings an educator fills out based on observations of a child, checklists that families fill out to rate a child’s skills or behaviors, and portfolios that include samples of a child’s drawing or writing. Because informal assessment is