Early Childhood Education Business Proof Reading Services

Early Childhood Education Business Proof Reading Services

Part a Review and Critique

Introduction

The study basically aims to discuss the assessment process in the early childhood education and highlighting the considerations and principles in the use of tools like rubrics and checklists in childhood education.

Assessment Tool

In order to have an insight in to student’s learning and growth at the educational system, the assessment is a method of collecting and analyzing information about the child mental faculty development and the validity of the educational inputs in the classroom education. It helps in understanding how far the educational program had been able to attain its desired outcomes. In the early childhood education, the assessment tools like rubrics and checklists are way of providing better support the development needs of the particular child and they are involved with understanding of the behavior, skills and competencies of the child based on observing and involving them in activities or programs. Thus the assessment tools are mainly concerned with certain areas of development of the child as (Kagan et al, 2015)

• Cognitive process
• Physical aspects
• Communication skills
• Social interactions and behavior
• Emotional behavior
• Math or number knowledge
• Temperament
• Literacy
• Specific disabilities if any, etc

In the early childhood, the main purpose of the assessment is

• Instructional purpose- to inform the students about the outcomes and what is expected out of them or how they will be evaluated
• Diagnosis-  the assessment tools like rubrics and checklist help n identifying the areas of improvement or support to the students and thus designing the programs to meet the particular needs
• Evaluation of the educational program-  it helps in understanding the validity of the current educational programs and thus incorporating changes in it
• Screening whether the development and growth of the child mental faculties as going as per targets (Debra et al, 2014)

Considerations For Using Checklists and Rubrics in Childhood Assessment

Where we live today in the era of standard and outcome orientation, the development of assessment tools for the assessing the early childhood educational process and their documentation is quite cumbersome task and thus the various methods of assessing childhood education must be based on certain considerations as below:

• The evaluation of the child must be based on having a prior understanding of their culture, family and background and the involvement of the family in understanding the development and growth of the child is important. Thus the teachers must conduct visits to the child’s house and this is specially considered if the culture or the language differences exist in case of particular child. This could help in prevention of the misinterpretation of the assessment results of the child (Black et al, 2010).
• In the assessment process of the Young children, various factors like tiredness, hunger, nature of child, time of the day, unfamiliar testing environment, etc can be barriers to the effective performance of the child and thus the young child may refuse to participate or perform, may wish to go out, start crying, etc and thus assessment should be developed and modified according to these things
• The assessment and the spontaneous reaction of the young children in their familiar environment must be taken in to account. As most of the young children learn by observing their teachers or family members and repeat their actions thus observing their level of participation, interactions and their behavior in the routine life is the main part of assessing their growth and learning (Debra et al, 2014).
• Collection of large data about the young children for assessment may be confusing and thus only the relevant and the most appropriate data should be collected by design and selection of the most appropriate tools and procedures thus the focus must be on quality of data collected.
• The assessment tools must be qualified for use on the basis on the basis of the importance of the information provided to family and the child and overall contribution to the program rather than just being appealing or attractive (Sandall.et al, 2010)

Extent to Which Assessment Tools Reflects SCSA Principles

School Curriculums and Standards Authority (SCSA) provides the principles of teaching and learning in order to provide the schools with an environment that is supportive in social and intellectual development of the child. These principles provide a base to whole planning of a schooling system and development of classroom learning programs and environment. Thus the teachers must develop understanding of these principle s and guidelines provided by SCSA and make use of them in the classroom setting (Valencia, 2009).

The main principles of assessment provided by SCSA are following

• Assessment tool must be designed to allow fair assessment of the child
• The educative purpose of the assessment tool used must be ensured
• It should be an inclusive part of the whole process of teaching and development of the child ( Black et al, 2010)
• The specific purpose of the assessing the child’s learning and development as per needs must be well identified and it must meet those specifically
• The main aim of the documentation of the assessment must be reporting and information to relevant stakeholders
• Also a whole school educational assessment must be carried out through use of the tool in particular child thus allowing improvement at school level

Essential Components and Design Principles

The designing of the assessment tools in the childhood education must be based on following principles of teaching and learning processes in the childhood education as

• Capability of challenging and connecting with the child’s mental faculties
• It must provide the young children with an opportunity to learn and develop
• The reflection and feedback must be equally important consideration as is the action orientation
• It must be accountable for individual differences through inclusion is important
• It must be capable of providing the young child with a supportive and leaning environment (Coleman et al,2006)
• It must have a clear purpose and direction and must be motivating to the young children

Thus the design of the assessment tools must be done bearing in mind the needs of the young children and their temperament, behavior, etc are also important.
The examples of the rubrics and checklist provided are meaningful inputs in gaining an insight to the learning and development process of the children. As far as Checklists are concerned, C1 is concerned , it will help to understand the writing skills of the young learner along with persuasive skills. The C2 is also well designed to assess the numeracy skills and computation related skills in the young learners. The C3 is designed to asses the writing skills in the learners and thus gaining insight in to exact shapes and writing patterns of each alphabet and number.

The rubrics are also elaborating the characteristic and requirements from the learners and thus R2 help in identifying the story problem solving capabilities of the learners and the rubric R1 in analyzing and evaluating the mathematical skills of the student in most precise manner.
 The Rubric R3 is a fairy tale rubric and qualifies to meet the needs of the educational programs specifically like fairy tale writing, imagination, illustrations, story sequencing, writing skills, etc and they can provide meaningful areas of consideration to the teachers or the family members as to which areas they need to focus on in the particular child.
However while making use of these tools the child’s language differences, culture, background, specific disabilities like autism, etc must be kept in mind and the program must be altered to meet the specific individual need of the child accordingly.

Conclusion

Though the assessment tools are very useful in evaluation of the individual child and the whole school while also providing the extent to which the objectives of the educational program are met, their use must be based on considerations of the individual differences or specific needs of the child as well as understanding the response and spontaneity of the child in familiar environment and focusing on the quality of data collected.

References

Principles of Teaching, Learning and Assessment Mandated Materials(online) available at http://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/home/principles/guiding-principles/teaching-learning-and-assessment-principles last accessed on 21 August 2016
Debra, W., Friedeichesen, M. and Walker, K. A et al (2014) Guide to Assessment in Early Childhood
(online) available at http://www.k12.wa.us/EarlyLearning/pubdocs/assessment_print.pdf last accessed on 21 August 2016
Valencia, S. W.(2009) "What Are the Different Forms of Authentic Assessment?" Understanding Authentic Classroom-Based Literacy Assessment, available at Eduplace.com. last accessed on 21 August, 2016
Black, P, & William, D. (2010). "Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment."Phi Beta Kappan. Available at PDKintl.org last accessed on 21 August, 2016

Part b Evaluating a Writing Sample

Introduction

Assessment is a very important part in the childhood education in order to assess the learning and development of the child while it also helps in understanding the extent to which the objectives of the education program are being achieved an informs the relevant stakeholders like teachers, parents, etc about the areas of improvement in the child. The study basically aims to evaluate and identify the process of assessing a writing sample in the year 2 of early childhood education and the associated learning goals as per the westerns Australian curriculum.

Writing Sample: The writing sample that had been chosen for the purpose of the childhood education evaluation had been attached at the end as appendix 1. It is a ‘short story’ written by a level 2 student and would be considered for assessment and evaluation in rest of the study.

Learning Goals- Year 2 Western Australian Curriculum

As per the western Australian Curriculum, the year 2 English learning goals basically are based on the following aspects of the child abilities and learning as

• Reading and viewing- at the year 2 level, the learners must be capable of
  • Identification of the structure in the language suitable for description of events or anything surrounding them
  • Reading texts with a number of new kind of sentence structures, some repetitive words, images, etc
  • They try to correct themselves through the knowledge they already have in relation to language, punctuations, words, etc
  • Must identify the meaning and the details provided by a written piece and they make interpretations by doing this (Phelps, 2012)
• Writing and creating- here the level 2 students must create the written piece and support it with an image by making use of the known words and focusing less on the words that they are not familiar to.
• Speaking and listening- the level 2 students manipulate sound words and the while speaking they make use of the words they come across daily at the educational system or elsewhere and  on the basis of the information acquired they develop images and textual pieces to explain their thoughts and thus making presentations in the classroom activities.

Method Used for the Evaluation of the Writing Sample

Since the sample chosen is a sort story written by the year 2 student thus the method that can be chosen for its assessment is the R3 which is a fairy tale rubric as this can be meaningful in evaluating the various aspects of writing and creating in the child at the year 2. This method of evaluation is very well going with the learning goals expected and outlined in the Western Australian Curriculum and discussed above. This method of evaluation helps in analyzing the child’s following capabilities very well as

• Writing- the child piece of writing will be evaluated for the originality of the fairy tale and the use of imagination along with the interest created by the writing piece (Bach t al, 2011)
• Illustrations- the child created images and illustrations are relevant to the story and the topic
• Story sequencing- the story flows in a proper sequence and that there are no mismatches in sequencing of events
• Understaning of character- the child use of the characters in the story are well able to come out in the mind of the reader and there is excellent presentation of the characters
• Understanding settings- the text of the story and the images are well coordinated to present the overall fairy tale very well (Valencia, 2009).

?The method selected for evaluating the fairy tale or short story is as follows:

The evaluation of the writing sample attached in the appendix 1 can be done on the basis of self developed pattern is available.

Development of the Method of Evaluation

The selection of the method of assessment of the young child writing short story sample is based on the learning goals for the English- year 2 of the western Australian curriculum. It is based on analyzing the writing and creating skills of the child. All the more the selection and the design of the evaluation technique is based on the Educational goals for the young Australians as per the Western Australians Curriculum. It involves development of the young children as

• Successful learners-thus making them lay active role in their own learning and development along with providing them with necessary skills required in terms of numeracy, language use, etc and making them creative and innovative throughout the process of development
• Confident individuals- development of the awareness and identity in the young learners at Australia and helping them to manage their own growth and development and preparing them for the future. Along with focusing on the development of the values of honesty and integrity while preparing them for the needs of the future in terms of social interactions and leading health life in future.
• Active and informed citizens- enabling the values towards the nationality and culture and capability of relating to other cultures, communicating with people from other cultures and being responsible Australian civilian in later stages of life (Black et al, 2010).

Thus the use of the evaluation tool must be focused on the overall development of the child and thus the evaluation tool must be used for the evaluation of the young learners in Australia as per the learning goals and the curriculum objectives (Reed, 2010).

Feedback

Feedbacks are an inseparable part of the Australian learning system and it helps the parents and relevant stakeholders to understand the areas of improvement of the young learner. The feedback that should be provided to the parents in the case is

• Child need improvement in the use of vocabulary and punctuations
• Handwriting is good
• Spellings of words must be focused
• Creativity is good
• Sequencing is good
• Image is well connected to text
• Punctuations needs focus as too much of and and improper use is evident

Supporting Child’s Progress and Writing Development for the Future: The feedback ill help the students and parents in knowing about their good and bad aspects and thus the individual or the child writing skills and the language could be further improved through working in the direction of the feedback. Thus it is valuable input for the child’s progress as the parents could know about their child performance at activities and they could help in improving the overall performance through working on feedbacks (Moskal et al, 2010).
Also it will help in planning of the next teaching cycle of the particular child as the key areas of focus have been clearly highlighted through the feedbacks thus the next step would be working on these areas and thus teachers, parents and students can plan accordingly.

Conclusion

The assessment of a writing sample in early childhood education helps in focusing and analyzing the child performance on various aspects like writing, sequencing, illustration and character understanding while it also help in setting up of education program goals. On analyzing the writing sample provided based on the assessment guidelines and the learning goals as per the western Australian Curriculum, it is quite evident that the assessment is an inseparable part of providing feedback to the stakeholders like teachers, parents, etc. all the more it is important in identification of the areas of improvement in the early childhood education and providing feedbacks to the parents and students thus managing the progress of the child in an effective manner.

References

Year 2 english achievement standard(organized by modes from the Australian Curriculum version 6.0)
(2015) Online available at http://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/media/documents/judgingstandards/year-2/english/assessment-pointers/2013-37338_ENG_Year_02_Judging_Standards_Assessment_pointers_Web_version.PDF last accessed on 21 August, 2016
Moskal, B. M., & Leydens, Jon A (2010). "Scoring Rubric Development: Validity and Reliability." Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(10).