TORO Posted December 11, 2008 Posted December 11, 2008 Hello We had parents evening today at the nursery, mum wanted to know why we are not tracking or using checklist against the new EYFS, told her we were told not to use checklist, and explained the new EYFS to her, not convinced still would prefer report and tracker/checklists. Can anyone pls share their checklists with me if one is being used in their settings Thanks Toro
Guest Posted December 11, 2008 Posted December 11, 2008 Hi Toro Mine is a list of development matters from the practice guidance, every time I record an observation in a child's learning diary I link it to the Eyfs learning and development and then put a date and page number and colour code it by term on the list/profile. That way I can see 'at a glance' where each child is developing (something ofsted requested at my last inspection) is that what you mean?
HappyMaz Posted December 11, 2008 Posted December 11, 2008 Can anyone pls share their checklists with me if one is being used in their settings Thanks Did you explain how your setting assesses children's learning in the new framework, TORO? Personally I would stick firm to my guns - if you believe that checklists are not appropriate then you should resist pressure to adopt them. If you start a precedent by going against your setting's normal practice for one parent then you'll find yourself under pressure to 'give in' on other issues for all sorts of reasons. Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh and not very good practice of working in partnership with parents - but I believe our job is about educating parents almost as much (if not more) than educating the children... Maz
Guest Posted December 11, 2008 Posted December 11, 2008 I am with Maz here, you shouldn't feel you have to change your whole setting's practice because of one vocal mum - all the other mum's may be perfectly happy with your current approach, although perhaps if this mum is particularly interested in her child's progress you or the key person could arrange a meeting with her to talk though and share the child's achivements, strenghts and interests in relation to the areas of learning - may be her concerns relate more to her individual child than your practice? I think the issue of using the eyfs developmental matters as check lists/tick lists/highlighted lists is still extremely ambiguous. It does actually state in the EYFS that developmental matters should not be used as tick lists - so what do our our LA advisors tell us to do - 'don't tick them use a highlighter pen instead' - and the difference between highlighting and ticking is.................................? The withdrawn government document 'progress from the start' that advised using tick lists was withdrawn from publication - so what does that tell use about tick lists?? I suppose the way that ofsted interpret the requirements will in the end determine how we choose to assess progress, since most settings will want to get a good report they are likely to follow what they recommend - but until then each to their own.
Guest Posted December 12, 2008 Posted December 12, 2008 I do agree with you both about ticklists. Having said that, the fact that i wasn't using them was an issue at my last inspection - even though each child has a high quality learning diary with individual next steps for learning and different ways for parent's to contribute, my inspector said that "I want to see development and progress at a glance". MAybe I wasn't vocal enough in disagreeing with her!! I have been using them for a year now and, right or wrong, I have found them useful in monitoring that I am providing a broad and balanced curriculum for each child. I have also been able to see how much progress each child is making. I don't feel that I am using the development matters as ticklists becuase I don't see them as being points to be achieved by each child. However, I am not entirely happy with my system either - is anybody? - and would be interested to find out how other settings choose to monitor the assessment of children
TORO Posted December 12, 2008 Author Posted December 12, 2008 Thanks for all the replies, l would probably speak to my Advisory Teacher, and hear what she thinks. Toro
skippy Posted December 29, 2008 Posted December 29, 2008 Hi I just wanted to let you know what i do. My way of tracking children is to use an overview with each ELG with terms at top and just say i did an obs that covered KUW exploration and investigation in that column i would put the age ie 30-50 and if it was adult led or child initiated. The only reason i use this is to give me an at a glance overview and to see if there are any gaps or perhaps lack of progression. I must stress it is just an overview, am making sense?
Guest Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 Hello We had parents evening today at the nursery, mum wanted to know why we are not tracking or using checklist against the new EYFS, told her we were told not to use checklist, and explained the new EYFS to her, not convinced still would prefer report and tracker/checklists. Can anyone pls share their checklists with me if one is being used in their settings Thanks Toro We use the Durham Flying Start summative assessment sheets and have them accessible to parents at all times. Each child has a profile book and it is in here that we put catch as you cans, observations, photographs, annotations of significant steps in development. We date each of these things and date the flying start sheets also. That way, you can see progress (because of teh dates) but the statements are not ticked off unless there are at least 3 dates where it has been achieved in different contexts. Sounds much more complicated than it actually is, it just shows progress. The sheets are kept in a polly pocket in the back of the profile book which are in teh setting with the children. Parents can make comments in the books whenever they wish too.
Guest Wolfie Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 The overall question that I keep coming back to when considering the acceptable use of ticklists and summative assessments for individual children is that of how we, as professionals, are able to track children's development and progress effectively, identifying any individual children who are NOT progressing/developing as they should if we don't have a set of developmental statements against which to assess? All the new initiatives being introduced at the moment, especially in relation to children's communication, speech and language development, emphasise the importance of early identification and assessment of individual children's difficulties and problems in order to address those needs promptly and effectively. How do we make those judgements about whether a child is developing "normally" (for want of a better word) unless we regularly assess development against the recognised "norms" for that particular age and stage? Regular summative assessment, based on continual obervation of the child, is therefore a must - and this must naturally involve the use of a set of statements to assess against. I know that the EYFS says that the Development Matters statements must not be used as a ticklist but why search for an alternative set of statements when those are there already?? They're not being used a simple ticklists if the setting has a comprehensive system of observations in place to back up assessments and those observations are "NICE", i.e. the child is observed at activities where the learning is - N - Natural I - Independent C - Consistent E - Embedded I think that sometimes we need to have the courage of our own convictions - the use of the word ticklists is always going to cause controversy and maybe we need to start using the term "summative assessment" more widely instead? Just a thought!
aliamch Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 ......and what an excellent thought it is Wolfie, I'm in total agreement with you. Karrie
Guest Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 thanks Wolfie - that's a very succint argument and gives me conviction to carry on what Im doing. Some areas of practice I feel very confident in why I do what I do but I still feel a bit wary of assessment and that has helped to get my thoughts straight about it
Beau Posted January 17, 2009 Posted January 17, 2009 Well put Wolfie. I have always used some sort of list of statements to check against so that I was fully aware of what I had observed and which areas a child was struggling in. I worry that without something like this many difficulties are not being picked up on if practitioners are not experienced or don't have a good grasp of the statements right across the board. Learning journeys are lovely but to my mind they don't give a clear picture to practitioners and therefore something else is needed alongside these.
Cait Posted January 17, 2009 Posted January 17, 2009 Well put Wolfie. I have always used some sort of list of statements to check against so that I was fully aware of what I had observed and which areas a child was struggling in. I worry that without something like this many difficulties are not being picked up on if practitioners are not experienced or don't have a good grasp of the statements right across the board. Learning journeys are lovely but to my mind they don't give a clear picture to practitioners and therefore something else is needed alongside these. We don't just use learning journeys for just this reason. We have the aspects too and note mini observations by each one and date it. i.e Matthew was playing with the cars and handed one to Thomas saying 'here you are, you have the blue one and I'll play with the red one' This forms a nice record of learning and parents love them. We put pictures in these too, alongside the observations and we print it out when the child leaves. It also highlights where we may need to focus some observations
Guest Posted January 18, 2009 Posted January 18, 2009 We use the Durham Flying Start summative assessment sheets and have them accessible to parents at all times. Each child has a profile book and it is in here that we put catch as you cans, observations, photographs, annotations of significant steps in development. We date each of these things and date the flying start sheets also. That way, you can see progress (because of teh dates) but the statements are not ticked off unless there are at least 3 dates where it has been achieved in different contexts. Sounds much more complicated than it actually is, it just shows progress. The sheets are kept in a polly pocket in the back of the profile book which are in teh setting with the children. Parents can make comments in the books whenever they wish too. we used to use flying starts and highlight when achieved but aso had a spplementary evidence sheet where we recorded why this was highlighed- but they were against the stepping stones pre EYFS-have they now changed them to meet eyfs development statements?
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