Week 4 – Summative Assessment: Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum and Assessment

Nimat Waterton

University of Phoenix

ECH/301: Foundations of Early Childhood Education

Patti Barita

5/5/2024

Week 4 – Summative Assessment: Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum and Assessment

Part 1: Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum

Daily Schedule for Toddler

The schedule is developmentally appropriate for toddlers because it assigns times for children to learn and interact with peers. It also enables them to access their nutritional needs, as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs requires. For instance, after drop off, the teacher ensures the toddlers get their breakfast before joining group activities. The schedule also allows the toddlers to sleep, especially in the early afternoon, before they eat and play again. The sensory activities involve the toddlers playing with objects to help them learn from the interactions. Toddlers use symbols to represent ideas. Hence, giving them objects like cones and bricks may help them develop skills like counting and others they may need for later levels. Group activities are also necessary to cultivate a sense of community from an early age in children’s growth. The schedule also keeps children active and utilizes play to learn and challenge the toddlers. When developing schedules for toddlers, their young age and physiological needs like rest, playing, and eating should be considered to ensure that they remain attentive enough and enjoy their time during education.

Preschool Schedule

Children in preschool should be involved in more educational activities. Therefore, despite adequate play, play and nap times should be reduced to improve educational engagement and prepare them for kindergarten. Therefore, unlike toddlers, who spend lots of time playing, napping, and eating, the schedules for preschoolers should incorporate more learning activities. For instance, after arrival, rather than spend an hour on food, the children should be received and engaged in work boxes that should have activities that are suitable for them. The workboxes can be rotated on different days so that children can perform a variety of activities during their preschool. Morning circle times should prepare children for what they should do, as it is required when using plan-do-review models like the Montessori Method. There should be bells to enable transitions. Ending the day with closing circles enables the class to review the day’s activities and prepare to go home. Including math and writing activities in the schedule prepares children to develop the writing skills they need to enter kindergarten. It provides challenges for the children to solve to keep their minds active and develop the skills needed for the next step.

A Full-Day Kindergarten Sample Schedule

During kindergarten, students’ schedules must become more learning-oriented. Therefore, the schedule should include teacher-chosen activities to improve the children’s understanding of language, math, and science skills. They should also have longer days than in the initial stages. Children’s physical, emotional, and mental growth requires that their curricula include more mental and physical activities. Therefore, the schedules must include more science, language, and mathematics. Language arts should cover the alphabet and its pronunciations. Decoding is also necessary. Children should read new words using their understanding of the phonetics of the alphabet. It is important to emphasize phonetics, math, and writing because, at this stage, the children are more mature and should learn the language skills necessary at the level and the next grades. There is reduced play time to create more time for learning. However, playtime should remain an important part of improving children’s social skills development. The increased focus on language, math, social studies, and science is essential for preparing the child to understand the areas with more complexity in the higher grades. Language is essential for communication and the understanding of complex concepts.

Grade 1 Sample Schedule

The primary grades require teachers to focus more on formal education than the kindergarten and earlier stages. There must also be more emphasis on STEAM subjects and reading to meet the need for more formal education in grades one and above. Therefore, the time spent on play in the earlier stages is replaced with more teacher-directed formal education that covers writing, comprehension, science, and arts. Students can also work more independently to guide their education. However, the teacher guides them because lessons must be pre-planned. Students also take longer times before breaks. There is also more focus on reading and comprehension because students should be fluent by grade 3. The focus on reading and communication aims to prepare students to learn more complex concepts taught in the upper grades. It is also important to involve students in group and individual work after lessons to ensure they understand the concepts they read. Teachers should also have individual consideration to ensure that even though the education is formal, children’s interests, strengths, and weaknesses are also explored during individual consultations.

Part 2: Developmentally Appropriate Assessment

Infants and toddlers

Infants’ and toddlers’ education is usually mostly informal. Hence, informal assessment methods are essential for their growth and development. Observations can be used to assess children at the level and determine their knowledge and skills in performing various group activities. It is usually systematic and looks for specific behaviors in specific environments. For instance, in authentic assessments, teachers develop checklists that may cover issues like classroom accessibility, children’s ability to perform tasks, and academic features of the classroom. Having a checklist enables the scoring to determine the children’s performance and know if changes are needed to improve children’s performance. Observations provide the data needed to accommodate toddlers’ and infants’ needs. They should be made based on the developmentally appropriate behaviors of the toddlers.

Anecdote records can also be used to assess infants and toddlers. Toddlers should be assessed as individuals and in their groups. Teachers should know what to expect from them and compare with their behaviors to know their behaviors. Anecdote records are usually short notes teachers write about what they observe in toddlers. For instance, they may narrate what they see in children when given assignments in groups. For instance, the teacher can assess one child’s behavior when the class is given an assignment. They must note how they perform tasks and determine how challenging they were for them and whether they may need to be challenged more. The assessment method can help determine a child’s strengths and weaknesses. It may also determine their interests. For instance, if the child shouts in class or shows more interest when the teacher covers a certain topic, the teacher will include it in their written description. The teacher may also include information on the child’s discipline and how they responded to various things in class. For instance, the teacher may say, “During group play, Kennedy was very interested in filling the puzzle. He was very quick to identify missing pieces. Therefore, he should be given more complex puzzles.”

The choice of the assessment tools should depend on the teachers” preferences and objectives. However, because toddlers and infants are mostly usually involved in informal activities, informal methods like observation and the use of anecdotes to record their progress are excellent. Technologies like iPads that children play with can be used in the process. Teachers can check children’s technology use by observing how they use them.

Preschoolers

Preschoolers also mostly learn in informal settings. For instance, they are involved in lots of learning through play. Therefore, the assessment should focus on the performance of activities that they do either as individuals or as members of groups to assess their social and academic skills. Preschool teachers can also use observations to assess children’s learning. For instance, teachers can place students in groups and assess their social or alphabet skills using technologies like iPads. iPads can be connected to the internet or have software that will display letters and shapes that students will identify to determine their learning.

Observations for preschoolers can involve using running records. Running records are informal assessments that focus on children’s behavior over a short period. For instance, they may be used in preschool to document how children play with their peers using blocks and other materials. Usually, each running record focuses on one child and involves a column with observations and the other with the relevant notes. For instance, one child may be observed while identifying objects on an iPad with their peers. How they engage in the activity and their general social and academic behaviors should be noted down. It is necessary to ensure that the chosen activities are appropriate for the child’s age. For learners with disabilities, the professional should consider how their disabilities affect their performance of roles at their age. Therefore, the notes should consider how changes should be made to improve their playing. For instance, for an autistic child, the running notes should cover how their autism affects their playing with peers and repetitive behaviors. They should also show their strengths and weaknesses to determine the types of activities that interest them in designing future learning materials.

Digital play using iPads can be used in observational assessment. For instance, the teacher can assess their ability to identify objects on the iPads. In internet enabled iPads, teachers can monitor the children’s play and their speed of identifying material on the iPads monitors. In such cases, the iPads only help improve the efficiency of the assessments and observation. The information from the teachers” observation of children’s digital play should be used in the writing of the running records.

Kindergarten

In kindergarten, children’s activities become more learning-oriented. Therefore, formal assessments are also important at this stage. Also, children at this stage can use technologies individually or in groups. Children can also create e-books and other digital material that can be assessed. Time sampling records can be used to assess children’s performance or functions. Time sampling involves deciding a period that can vary from minutes to hours and assessing the children’s involvement in the required activities. Time sampling can be done for specific periods and several times a day. Usually, the aim is to determine the frequency of certain behaviors and children’s tendencies.

Time sampling can help show whether or not a child is distracted. The activities used may also vary depending on the child’s level and developmental issues. For instance, a teacher may assign a task that should be performed individually on the iPad and monitor the child’s usage of the iPad to perform the assigned tasks. The informal assessment method should then be used to determine when the child strays from the assigned work. For instance, if the work is to identify objects on the iPad, the teacher and their assistants will record each time the child moves from the assignment. The teacher may also have their own iPad or laptop that they will use to note the times when the child was on task and when they were off-task. It is important to first determine what being on task will be and what being off-task will be in the assessment.

The assessment may also be used to determine children’s ability to focus, especially among children with developmental disorders like attention deficit. For such students, the teacher’s assessment of how many times they went off-task and what they did, whether when they worked alone or in groups, may help determine the level of supervision and the steps to take to help them improve their learning. Time sampling can also be combined with observation, especially during playtime, to know the child’s tendencies and interests. Children tend to remain on task, especially when they engage in activities that are interesting to them. It may also be used to supervise and improve learners’ quality of experiences in school settings.

Grade 1, 2, or 3

Portfolios are among the tools that teachers in grades 1 through 3 can use to track their students’ learning. They include samples of artifacts that teachers can collect from children’s learning to determine how they progress over time. Portfolios can be used for first graders for several purposes. They include showing the progress of the learners over time and encouraging better performance. They can also help guide the teacher’s lessons. Therefore, when developing portfolios, professionals must consider the developmental stage and needs of the child. For instance, they should be emotionally, socially, and cognitively appropriate for the children they are used to. They should also give the teachers, parents, or other stakeholders who may be involved a visual representation of progress over time. For instance, the teacher can use a camera to record drawings and other artifacts that the child may have that are relevant to their learning. For instance, in a drawing class, the teacher can photograph the children’s work and store it to compare with future drawings to show their progress. Sample items that teachers typically record include writings, math solutions, drawings, and photos of scientific experiments. Portfolios may also include recordings of children playing in group and individual settings to determine their social skills and teamwork, among other skills.

Cameras and video-enabled tablets are important technologies that can be used to record and display children’s portfolios. Also, special consideration should be given to children with special needs. For instance, portfolios can involve different artifacts depending on what the teacher wants. They may want to know an autistic child’s social and problem-solving skills. In such cases, the focus will be on their performance of the roles in the school settings. Portfolios should be made depending on what growth areas the teacher wants to assess over time. It is also necessary that students are involved in determining what will be recorded over time. The materials included should also reflect the goals and objectives. For instance, they should show a child’s performance over time of a certain skill. The materials included must have a positive influence on instruction. For instance, by keeping records of a child’s behavior during play, the teacher will want to assess the progress of their social skills.