Planificación de la evaluación

(En inglés)

Assessment Planning

Allison Ferry: Planning, observation, and instruction is the only way that happens. We know as teachers that once the door opens and the kids come in, that everything else is history, we go about our day. My lifeline is getting that time to reflect where am I going next week and it ties in what are — what are my kids interested in, what are the teaching goals and then, what do I need to collect as far as data.

And data, I know for many teachers, can be a very daunting term, but it's something that can happen within the environment and within your daily instruction. I think in our classroom, it's become almost part of the culture where it's not this big go for data; it's something that we weave in and that we've learned what are the tools that we can manage while we're still facilitating positive interactions, while we're still problem-solving with children, while we're still supervising.

That is what's important to me is that forethought that goes into it. As it really takes planning and when it has that forethought of planning; whether it's digesting data that was taken the week before and deciding how does that look within your plan for that week or that month or whether it's figuring out where do we need to collect evidence. And evidence doesn't always have to be on paper.

Sometimes, it's having conversations with staff members that are targeted conversations that we all looked for certain things during the day, or it's an ongoing journal that's part of the classroom environment. So it's not a big deal to staff anymore. It's part of what we do in our daily fluent routine. I plan for observing and assessing children. You know, it's really embedded into my lesson plans.

So it is something that, really in the summer there's a lot of critical thought on when I'm forward thinking for, "How are we going to get all of the domains covered?" So that children ... We're covering all of the preschool learning foundations for language and for math and what are all the motor skills. So I do a lot of forward planning and mapping those out and it's something that's fluid. It obviously changes throughout the year as you — as you see what children are interested in, as you see what children's skill levels are.

We have clipboards in our classroom where we can take open-ended notes for the things that we're seeing. And then in small groups or during specific activities where the children don't know that they're being assessed per se on anything, but we might be looking at three or four or up to seven different aspects of assessment. And it really does combine nicely together. Many times, when we're doing an activity, I'm looking at a language piece, and I'm looking at a motor piece, and I'm looking at an academic piece which may be a math concept or some other concept.

Monica Berry: I definitely use the observations when I see that we still need a lot of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge. I will tie that into the unit that we're discussing for the week. So, this week is “oceans.” I have games that we're going to be doing in activities as far as phonological awareness, clapping out sounds of ocean animals, and though we'll also be doing some rhyming. I'll have some rhyming books: "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," and they'll be able to identify the same sounds. And we're also going to be doing alphabet knowledge.

We have also another fishing activity where they're going to fish for letters, so that way I can see and they get to name the letters when they pull it out ... "Oh A! I just fished for an A." "Oh, I fished for a C," so that way they're identifying that.

Paul Mezzacapo: How we focus on children's individual goals, and ... Is to kind of on two fronts because not only do we assess how the children are doing, we're constantly looking at that data, we're planning individual goals for children. We're not only planning their goals but we're also incorporating their interests.

So when we're assessing what they — what they might prefer in the classroom that informs "how" we — the "how" of — of what we're going to teach them. So it's not only the standards that we need to meet, but in what form are we going to teach those standards. We ... Very often, we might plan for individual children, we might plan for small groups of children, and then also for a large group, kind of like a three-tiered approach.

Erica Edwards: We have these checklists basically which shows us ... We write down the child's name and then, so this demonstrates knowledge of the alphabet. So, let's say I plan an alphabet activity. With each child, I'm able to observe how many letters they know and I mark on the sheet where they are. And by grouping it then, I can continue to plan out small group activities for that group of students who needs to be moved to the next level. So that becomes really helpful.

Nadene Wilkins: Intentional teaching is challenging. Without getting good documentation on children's progress, and really knowing where the child is, you cannot do intentional teaching. And it takes time to get an understanding so that this comes easier. Because intentional teaching is just that — intentional. It's not necessarily what we're used to doing; it's how you talk with the children. You're asking specific questions and doing a lot more scaffolding than in other ways that we used to work with children where we were focusing more on them being involved in an activity and socializing. Get best quality data to plan terrific intentional teaching for our kids to get ready for kindergarten and be very successful pass third grade and beyond.