ILP Participation – Attend a Webinar

For my second independent learning project I chose to watch another webinar because of the positive experience I had with my first. This webinar was titled: “The ABC’s of Early Childhood Assessment: Managing the Bits and Pieces.” The main focus of this webinar was how to develop appropriate framework for early childhood assessment. This is a lot more difficult to develop than one would think. The webinar’s instructor used an analogy to explain this: Just like many tools are necessary for building a house, there’s no single assessment that can fully test a student. We therefore need a “toolbox of assessments” for different things teachers want to measure, like approaches to learning, self-regulation, numbers, literacy etc.

I learned that it’s very difficult to monitor students just through formal testing. For written tests, young kids get fatigued and bored faster. They also have a more restricted ability to comprehend instructions. I thought it was very interesting to learn about other forms of assessments that aren’t “formal.” Like simply observing young students and writing observations of their progress over the year on sticky notes. If a teacher has a class of 25 kids and closely observes 5 students’ progress each day, by the end of the school week all 25 kids will have been observed. It’s important to give all students attention. Also, having a binder that students keep dated work in throughout the year will help visually show their progress. Students can be tested using objects, toys, or building projects to show collaboration and problem solving skills. Overall, I learned a great deal of helpful information for monitoring my elementary aged students’ progress. It’s most important to monitor a student’s progress in their early schooling, so I have a vital job to make sure my students are improving in all areas.