The Importance of Assessing Childrens Progress

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The Importance of Assessing Childrens Progress
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Why Do We Assess Young Children?

• It is a way of discovering what children
• Are interested in
• Know and understand about early reading and
  mathematics
• Are learning
• Are having difficulty learning
• Change over time

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Pre-School Years
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What Does This Mean?
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A critically important goal in early childhood is
to understand the individual progress and needs
of children.
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Purpose of Assessment

• Identify childrens ability levels in key areas
  related to later reading and math.
• Track childrens progress in developing key
  skills across the pre-K year.

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Purpose of Assessment

• Identify specific areas of difficulty as indexed
  by
• significantly lower scores than expected based on
  childs age
• significantly lower scores than demonstrated by
  child in other reading or math areas
• childs lack of progress in development of a key
  skill

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What are the Tools a Teacher needs for Assessment?

• Informal Assessment
• Teacher checklist
• Portfolios
• Observation with notes

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Informal Assessment
In general, informal assessment cannot provide
the type of standardized validated information
needed to fully evaluate childrens progress.
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Informal Assessment

• Informal Assessment cannot
• determine baseline level of function
• norm-referenced information
• determine if a child has age appropriate skills
• determine if a child has a learning deficiency
• offer clearly reliable and valid assessment
  results

These things require Formal Assessment
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What are the other Tools a Teacher needs for
Assessment?

• Formal Assessment
• Screening Measures
• Diagnostic Assessment
• Progress Monitoring Assessment

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What are Progress Monitoring Assessments?

• Assessments conducted on a routine basis to
• Estimate rates of improvement in early
  reading skills
• Identify children who are not demonstrating
  adequate progress and, therefore, require
  additional or different forms of instruction

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Samples of Progress Monitoring Assessment

• Rapid vocabulary naming
• Rapid letter naming
• Blending words

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CIRCLE mCLASS
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Progress Monitoring Unlikely to Achieve Goal
Aim line
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Progress Monitoring Likely to Achieve Goal
Aim line
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State Center TEEM Partnerships
Independent School District
Head Start Program
Faith Based Program
Child Care
City
Non-Profit
For Profit
Amarillo Austin Brownsville Dallas El Paso Fort
Worth Houston Laredo Raymondville San
Antonio Wichita Falls Abilene Midland Odessa Tyler
/Kilgore
Day Homes
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If School Readiness is the GoalSome Schooling
Without TEEM is NOT Better than No Schooling At
All
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Children Made the Greatest Gains in Literacy When
their Teachers had More TEEM (1 vs. 1 ½ yrs -
Spanish)
1 1/2 yr of TEEM
1 yr of TEEM
1 1/2 yr of TEEM
of Letters Named in 60 sec.
1 yr of TEEM
1 1/2 yr of TEEM
1 yr of TEEM
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TEEM Provides Good Support for Those Children
Starting Furthest Behind in Literacy (English
Spanish)
Items Correct in Letter Knowledge and Print
Awareness at End of Year
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With TEEM Even Children Who Have Relatively Good
Vocabulary Skills Show Strong Improvement
(Spanish)
Items Correct in Vocabulary at End of Year
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Starting Earlier Makes Getting There Easier!
Expected Rate of Early Reading Growth
Documented Growth for At Risk Children
Early Childhood Later Childhood
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