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In recent years, a new approach of “authentic” or performance assessment has gained acceptance among early childhood and primary grade educators. “Authentic” or performance assessment in the early childhood field is part of the process of ensuring that children actually “learn”; it includes objectively documenting children’s skills, knowledge, behavior, and accomplishments on multiple occasions. The approach is designed to evaluate many elements of learning and development not captured by standardized tests. Teachers collect documented information to assess each child’s learning within the comforts of their authentic classroom environment and during meaningful, curriculum-based activities. A window then emerges to the child’s learning. As a result of assessing ongoing documentation, a comprehensive, developmentally appropriate curriculum can be customized and implemented based on the knowledge of the each child. As a result, teachers are able to best provide curriculum-embedded opportunities that challenge children in all levels of abilities and development.
Curriculum-embedded performance assessments provides evidence ensuring children actually are learning, enable teachers to integrate instruction and assessment, and provide for meaningful evaluation and genuine accountability At Lord of Life Preschool and Kindergarten Academy our teachers systematize their observations by guiding those observations with specific criteria and well-defined procedures. Our performance assessment procedures consist of three complementary components: (1) Developmental Guidelines and Checklists Checklists: Checklists create a profile of children’s individualized progress by charting children’s progress over a wide span of time and development. Checklists are developmentally scaled and structured around developmentally appropriate activities. They are designed to assist teachers in observing and documenting individual children’s growth and progress. Checklists cover seven domains (1) Personal and Social Development; (2) Language and Literacy; (3) Mathematical thinking; (4) Physical Development, (5) Scientific thinking, (6) Social Studies, and (7) the Arts. Each domain is divided into functional components, each of which contains performance indicators that represent important skills, knowledge, behaviors, and accomplishment. Four choices are provided for each item/criteria: not yet, emerging, proficient, and mastered. The skill, knowledge, behavior, or accomplishment indicator described is either: (1) not yet: not yet demonstrated; (2) emerging: is intermittent and not yet demonstrated consistently; (3) proficient: demonstrates reliability in performance; or (4) mastered: demonstrated all time and can even peer teach others Portfolios: Portfolios are purposeful collections of children’s work collected on multiple occasions, to illustrate their efforts, progress, and achievements. Children’s individual work is collected in above domains to provide rich documentation of each child’s experiences throughout the year. Portfolio content parallels classroom activities and assists in the development of new activities based on the assessment of the child’s progress and interests. The entire portfolio collection becomes a tool for documenting, analyzing, and summarizing a child’s growth and development through the entire school year. They enable teachers to integrate instruction and assessment. Summary Reports: The primary purpose of the summary report is to guide and support children’s learning while providing a report to parents of what has been learned. This report consists of a brief summary of each child’s classroom performance based on teacher observations, checklists and portfolios. Teachers carefully review the checklists and portfolio and then make overall assessments to report to parents and to the Director of LOLPK early childhood programming. The information is put into a concise record that children’s families can understand and that administration can use. Teachers, parents, and administration all need accurate and complete data records to ensure the trustworthiness and validity of performance assessment. Ways Parents Can Participate in Assessment: Parents are very important sources of assessment information in regards to their own child. Parents have known their child better and longer than anyone else and have information regarding their child’s previous development that is unique to their experience. At the beginning of the school year, parents will have the opportunity to fill-out an Assessment Inventory, a Developmental Profile and Goal-Setting Sheet. Three times a year, parents will be sent a Home to School Assessment Form. Formal parent-teacher conferences are provided twice a year, and more frequently upon request. Renewed interest in documentation and a deeper appreciation of assessment and its connection to curriculum in the early childhood classroom enables teachers and parents compelling evidence of the intelligential powers of young children.
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At Lord of Life Preschool and Kindergarten Academy , each child’s education is very important, and we recognize the importance of accountability to our young children and their families. We build our program on current research that supports the important connections between curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
