23 Monitoring Growth and Preparing Development Portfolio

N. Dhanya

Hello everybody, happy to meet you and speak to you on Preschool Individual Growth and Development Indicators. They are referred to as Preschool IGDIs in short. Have you heard of these somewhere or undergone any such tests? These are nothing but quick, efficient, and repeatable measures of correlates or components of developmental performance designed for use with children 30 to 66 months of age.

Preschool IGDIs are indicators of child status in different developmental domains. As indicators, these measures are not considered comprehensive.However they are specifically designed to help teachers and parents monitor growth of individual children over time. Growth or change is a powerful metaphor for all educational programmes, and is especially appropriate for evaluation in early childhood education.

Preschool IGDIs can also be employed in regular early childhood programmes with a stable cadre of enrolled students, or in community based programmes where children are seen more periodically by educational or other child service professionals.

These IGDIs sample child performance in each major developmental domain (ie. Language, social, cognitive, motor and adaptive) with a special emphasis on assessment related to long term developmental outcomes that are common across the early childhood years.

What do you really mean by assessment in early childhood education?

Similar to practices for older children, assessment in early childhood education covers a number of different functions such as identification of children needing intervention and the like.

Currently there are two different approaches emerging for assessment in order to monitor the progress in early childhood education, akin to what has occurred in other plethoras. One is called a critical skill mastery approach and the other one is general outcome measurement approaches.

Lets see what is the Critical skill mastery now

• Critical skill mastery has become the dominant approach to assessment in early childhood education which is characterized by assessment of separate, discrete skills that are assumed to be developmentally linked skills and ordered in a sequence of hierarchy.
• It can identify specific developmental status of individual children and can be a strong foundation for programme planning assessments.
• Instead of breaking skills down into pieces and gathering incomparable measures, general outcome measurement allows the practitioner to continually measure a student’s progress over time and make changes as they are needed.
• This is characterized by the use of standardized, prescriptive measures and long term measurement that remains constant over time.
• Slope of progress over time is used as an indicator of progress in the entire domain or curriculum. Increases or decreases in the slope over time indicates that skills are or are not being learned and used successfully.

As a result, general outcome measures provide direct assessment of child progress toward a long term goal.Have you heard of preschool IGDIs that are related directly to specific developmental and educational outcomes.There are couple of them. Lets get to know one by one in detail. The first one isExpressive language.

Children usually use gestures, sounds, words or sentences to convey wants and needs or to express meaning to others. Two indicators used are picture naming fluency and semi structured play.

What do you understand by picture naming? Picture naming is done by presenting photographs or colour line drawings of objects commonly found in preschoolers natural environments. Categories of objects may include animals, food, people, household objects etc. Each photograph and line drawing is printed on a 8×5 inch index card. The examiner demonstrates the task with a set of four cards, looking at each card, naming the object as quickly as possible and moving to the next card. The child practices the task with the same set of sample cards named by the examiner, ensuring the child understands the importance of speed in naming the pictures. The examiner then shuffles the entire deck of cards, presents the card at the top of the deck and starts a stopwatch. Acceptable names for each object are printed on the back of each card to help the examiner determine the correctness of the child’s labels. Incorrectly named pictures include errors and omissions. If the child does not respond to a picture within three seconds of its presentation, the examiner asks the child, “Do you know what that is?” or “What’s that?” If the child does not respond within an additional two seconds, the examiner shows the next card. After exactly one minute has expired, the examiner stops the activity and counts the total number of pictures named correctly. Studies of the psychometric properties of this measure – total number of pictures named correctly in one minute – have generated strong evidence for its use as an indicator of growth of preschoolers’ expressive language skills.

Now lets see how you can measure expressive language through Semi structured play – In this format, two peers (typically the same age and sex) play in a setting away from others. Each pair is provided with a preselected set of materials, that can be used in multiple, imaginative ways. The examiner tells the children to work together to make something with the materials, walks away from the immediate area, and then starts a stopwatch. Mind you, the examiner does not interact with children during the activity unless one child (or bothchildren) leaves the area or adult intervention is needed to resolve a conflict. After exactly 10 minutes, the examiner stops the activity. During the activity, the examiner observes one child’s verbal behavior using a 10 second, partial-interval observational tool. This tool measures two child-produced behaviours per interval, an intelligible utterance of three of fewer words and an intelligible utterance of four or more words. Once the observer completes the 10 minute observation, she calculates two scores; the total number of intervals in which the child produced an utterance of three or fewer words, and the total number of intervals in which the child produced an utterance of four or more words.

The second one is Early literacy. Preschool IGDIs are specifically designed to assess preschool children’s progress in early literacy development. Phonemic awareness and analysis is widely seen as a critical element of early reading success and there is clear evidence that development of these skills begins during the preschool years. They also assess alliteration, rhyming and phonemic blending.

The third aspect namely social interaction is measured using two IGDI formats namely – Play Ideas and Joint play.

• For the first, Play ideas picture prompts, the experimenter presents the child with a photo of his or her own playground or classroom. The picture includes areas of the classroom or playground that were typically used for free play. The experimenter asks the child to ‘pretend that he or she was going here with a friend’. The child is then asked to name all of the things that she and a friend could do together in the area.
• For the second approach namely Joint play, the experimenter tells the child that ‘a friend and I are going into your classroom to play together’. Again the child is asked to name as many things as they can that could be done together. With both the verbal and picture prompts, the total number of play ideas that a child generates during a three minute time period is taken.

Joint play is also measured during a semi structured play activity. The children are presented with ‘silly face’ pieces (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, moustache etc) and a card with a blank face on it. The children are asked to work together to make the blank face a silly face. Another method is to present the children with a puzzle form, and each child is given one half of the puzzle pieces. The children are asked to play together so that they finish the puzzle. In both the cases, children can play for five minutes.

Apart from these techniques, there are some other that have been in use over the past years. One such technique is Observation. I am sure all of you would be very much familiar with this technique.

• In order to identify a child’s current competence levels, one can rely on observation of skills mastered.
• This can also be used to identify the effectiveness of the setting, specific areas of the setting, and the teachers.
• Purposeful observation offers benefits to practitioners, parents and children and is a positive way of responding to the needs of all children.
• Practitioners should provide appropriate learning experiences to foster and encourage children’s development across the range of skill areas and undertake informal observations regularly.
• According to Pugh (2001), observation and assessment are the essential tools of watching and learning by which we can both establish the progress that has already been made and explore the future – the learning that is still embryonic.
• Young children’s development is best appreciated by observing them in action in their everyday environments at home and in preschool.
• To make best use of their observations, teachers need a systematic approach to observing what each child is doing.
• Observation guides, child development charts, and summary sheets are helpful tools for teachers.
• Observations can help to clarify a child’s current levels of performance and skills mastered too and identify the areas where more practice is required.
• The skills of the observer, combined with their knowledge of the child and the setting will be paramount.
• Observations can be undertaken on (i) individual children – focusing on one or more specific areas of development or progress such as social interactions and also on (ii) groups of children – to focus on one or more area – eg., abilities to share or take turns (iii) the whole group – to assess whether all children have mastered one skill, eg., jumping with two feet together (iv) an area of the room – to assess whether the area is well used, appropriately used and what interactions occur there and (v) a practitioner – to assess an area of professional skill, eg., appropriateness of interactions with the children.

Thus observations and assessment can be used mainly (i) to develop our own understanding of children’s current competence levels (to assist with individual planning), (ii) to inform planning and, assess interactions between adult and children, child to child, adult to child and adult to adults too (iii) to assess specific events and assess the staff (iv) to devise optimum environments to promote the holistic development of each child.

All said and done, now lets see how one can do an observation. Basically observation can be done in many ways. Lets get to know each of these.

• Time sampling is a process where the observer makes a note of the child’s actions and interactions at regular intervals over a set period of time. This sampling is useful to investigate aspects of the learning environment, the amount of time spent by the child in different activities, the interactions of the child with others and the nature of interactions etc.
• Event or frequency sampling is used when practitioners wish to clarify their understanding of a specific event as it records the frequency of an event.
• Focused or target child observations include a full, detailed written record of a child’s movements during a predetermined time and it gives an account of the specific activities a child has selected, the area of the learning environment in which the child was working, the person with whom the child was interacting and the expressive language that was used.

 Observing through play

As much learning transpires from play situations it is quite sensible to find ways of recording evidence through observing children at play. One of the problems of the same is objectivity. Although one may understand what a child is doing and learning in a play situation, it may be difficult to assess progress and record it in a meaningful manner. Only way possible is to be clear on the intended learning outcomes through the play based activities. This should be skillfully intervened too to bring in better outputs.

Yet another technique that could be made use of is a Sociogram

A sociogram could be used to develop greater understanding of a child’s social interactions. A record of the observations carried out for a set period of time would be made and this could be represented graphically if desired and even reflect gender relationships or type of play.

Are you familiar with terms such as Movement/tracking charts?These are a rapid method of noting a child’s movements during a set period and can be easily interpreted. Starting with a basic sketch of the room layout, arrows and times can be added to indicate a child’s movements between activities so that conclusions can be drawn about how many activities are approached and the length of time spent at each. If subsequent movement charts are taken at different times of the day and the week then a fuller picture will emerge.

I am sure you would have definitely heard and used checklists and questionnaires.

• These are the most preferred choice by most early years practitioners and are viewed by some as easier to implement and interpret.
• However checklists only offer a snapshot picture of what a child can do, on that day and at that particular time.
• Secondly, checklists are created around a sequential approach to development and assume that all children will proceed through the defined stages in much the same systematic order.

They are usually presented in tabular form and are generally easy to interpret and therefore accessible to all, but they can also be represented pictorially so that children themselves can be involved in recording their own progress.

Involving the children in different purposeful activities is another method Children have had a right to be heard, but very young children are not mature enough, knowledgeable or verbally capable of contributing anything of value to observations and assessments.

• For very young children likes and dislikes can be discovered through simple pictorial records, which can be added to the child’s records and shared with parents and other practitioners. Simple drawings or photographs of a range of common activities can be presented alongside three faces – one happy, one indifferent and one sad. The activity can be discussed with the child and then he/she could colour in the appropriate face to indicate preferences. To ensure understanding, an adult could complete a similar chart alongside the child, making sure that the child is not simply copying the adult’s selections.
• Young children can also be involved in progress recording through progress books, collecting and presenting evidence of their work in portfolios, responding to interviews and through the self completion of charts.
• Sticker books can also be used for involving children as they help children to make their own book.

Circle time can be a valuable tool to facilitate listening to others and even children with limited or no communication skills.

Profiling is another method

• Profiles of young children and their progress are common place in early years settings.
• Each child will have individual records kept including basic information and details, entry profile, previous involvement with other professionals, intervention strategies employed, parental information gathered and records of progress review meetings.
• Basic information about the child should include the child’s fears, self confidence, llikes and dislikes and self help skills which will help the practitioner to prepare for the child’s entry, thus making the transition as smooth as possible for the parent as well as the child.

As time progresses, a child’s profile will naturally increase considerably in size, but will contain a thorough and detailed catalogue of past, current and future progress made and all plans and strategies that have been implemented

Lets take a quick look at the guidelines for documenting children’s learning

Documented plans, records of children’s assessments and evaluations can be effective ways to support and extend children’s thinking, learning and development.

What are the things you should be aware of?

• Documentation should be viewed as an important part of one’s work
• Children’s ideas and voices in planning, documentation and evaluation should be captured.
• Different methods must be tried to find what is realistic, achievable and relevant for children.
• Be selective in what one chooses to document because it is not possible to capture all of the rich experiences and learning that occureveryday.
• Share documentation efforts and experiences and continue to learn, grow and develop
• Be open to change as they dynamics of the children’s group or team change

   Be clear about what is to be done.

Preparing developmental portfolio

What is a portfolio? It is a record of the child’s progress of learning: what the child has learned and how she has gone about learning; how she thinks, questions, analyzes, synthesizes, produces, creates; and how she interacts – intellectually, emotionally and socially with others. Arter and Spandel (1991) define the portfolio as a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits to the student, or others, her efforts or achievement in one or more areas.

• A preschool assessment portfolio contains all the work a child has completed over a pre-determined amount of time which may contain artwork the child has created, pictures taken of the child during school hours, and anecdotal notes recorded by the teacher.
• Four key areas should be documented in a preschool portfolio. These include fine and gross motor skills, social and emotional development, cognitive development and language and literacy skills.
• By organizing the portfolio in this way, it will be easy to spot the areas in which the child is excelling, as well as the areas where the child may be encountering difficulties or need extra attention.
• Also included in this section of the portfolio should be photos of the child performing basic motor functions as well as teacher observations.
• Observations should be complete with dates as well as the child’s age at the time of observation in years and months.
• When assessing fine motor skills, one should be sure to include examples of the child’s writing and artwork.
• For social and emotional development examples in the portfolio should include teacher observations of social skills as well as documented assessment regarding typical preschool milestones. In addition of the age of the child an example that led to the assessment that the milestone has been reached should also be quoted.
• Cognitive skills are often harder to document through pictures. However examples of the types of cognitive activities the child enjoys participating in; such as, pattern and sorting activities or block building may be included.

Children’s understanding of stories as well as their receptive and spoken language development can contribute for recording language and literacy development.

Use of the portfolio

Wide use of portfolios can stimulate a shift in classroom practices and education policies toward schooling that more fully meets the range of children’s developmental needs.

Components of the portfolio

• The portfolio can include work samples, records of various forms of systematic observation, and screening test.
• Work samples meet the need for accountability while recognizing and supporting individual progress.
• They keep track of a child’s progress – in other words, they follow the child’s success rather than his failure.
• Teachers and parents can follow children’s progress by reviewing children’s writings, drawings, logs of books read by or to them, videos or photographs of large projects, tape recordings of the children reading or dictating stories and so forth.

Ideally a portfolio includes observations in the form of anecdotal records (factual, non judgmental notes of children’s activity which are cumulative, thereby revealing insights about the child’s progress when they are reviewed sequentially), checklist or inventory (easiest tool for recording children’s progress based on instructional objectives and the development associated with the acquisition of the skills being monitored), rating scales (used when the behaviour has several aspects or components), questions and requests (asking direct, open ended questions of individual children) and screening tests (to identify the skills and strengths that children already possess).

How is the portfolio used in evaluation?

The material in a portfolio should be organized by chronological order and category and also according to curriculum area or category of development (cognitive, gross motor, fine motor and so forth).

Once it is organized, the teacher can evaluate the child’s achievements which is usually done appropriately through comparison of the child’s current work to her earlier work.

Portfolios are not meant for comparing children with each other. They are used to document individual children’s progress over time.

The use of portfolios to assess young children provides teachers with a built-in system for planning parent teacher conferences.

Conclusion

Appropriate assessment of young children should involve the children themselves, parents and teachers. The portfolio method promotes a shared approach to making decisions that will affect children’s attitudes towards work and school in general. It frees the teacher from the constraints of standardized tests. It also allows teachers to expand the classroom horizon and enlarge each child’s canvas. Thus the teacher can focus on the child and develop an intimate and enduring relationship with him.