Early Childhood Assessment Cycle

Early Childhood Assessment Cycle

Step by Step Guide to Using Assessment to Support Learning in Early Childhood Classrooms

Observation

Analyze & Evaluate

Instruction

The summarize, plan, and communicate step is when educators and evaluators now take the newly analyzed data and use it to idenify the specific learning needs and academic stregnths of a single student, or with a small group of students. Once these components are identified, planing can be put into place in order to differentiate instruction in a way that each student can get the support(s) that they need in order to be successful in the classroom/program.

Document & Reflect is the stage where an educator and/or evaluator records data taken from the observation stage in regards to student perfomance in a targeted academic/social. This collected data should be done as soon as the behavior and/or task implementation is done in order to get the most accurate assessment data.

The final step is the assessment process is Instruction. This step involves teacher instruction in the classroom using with the implementation of any accomodations/modifications and/or overall changes to the Early Childhood Education Program that was discussed in the previous stages. The cycle can then repeat itself again upon the next progress monitoring date.

Observation involves either the educator, evluator, or both oberving a student or group of students when they are working on a targeted set of skills that involve completing an assigned task within the classroom setting. The goal of these observations is to see how that student, or group of students, apporach the task, and in turn, how they respond: was the task too hard for the student? was it too easy?

The Analyze & Evaluate step of the assessment cycle involves educators and/or evaluators taking the time to use appropriate data assessment tools to take a detailed look at the data collected from the observation of students. During this step, questions such as "What did we see that was successful?" "Where did the students struggle?" "Could there have been something done differently?" are being asked.

Document & Reflect

Summarize, Plan & Communicate

References

Wortham, S. C., & Hardin, B. J. (2020). Assessment in early childhood education. (8th ed.). Pearson. ISBN-13: 9780135206522 Resources For Early Learning. (2014). Early Childhood Assessment. Resources for Early Learning. http://resourcesforearlylearning.org/fm/early-childhood-assessment/ ‌