After watching the video on Work Sampling I felt more at ease than watching last week’s video on the Screeners. I think that the Work Sampling method is more for the benefit of the student than the Screeners. My reasoning for this is that while the Screener was used to label and give an exact score to the child, that could possibly deny them entry into a program, the Sampling Method used “As Expected” or “Needs Development” as a way to help the parents and the teachers give more support to the child. The Work Sampling seems helpful to the teacher because she/he can have a better understanding of how to guide instruction to individual students. This seems like it gives more power to the student because they are the ones that will benefit from this kind of evaluation. I did not notice any underlying ranking system with the Work Sampling Method. I also liked that the Work Sampling program looked at the child in a more holistic way than the Screener program did. The Work Sampling program used multiple domains to evaluate the students including art, language, math, science, physical development, and personal safety. It seems like the Screeners could benefit from adding more dimensions into their testing to get a more realistic idea of what the child is capable of doing. As stated in the article Moving Forward With Kindergarten Assessment Efforts , “ It is important, however, to understand that a single assessment instrument cannot, and should not, be used to meet all of the child, instructional, policy, programmatic, and accountability purposes a state or program may have.” In one of the readings it talked about what parents thought of as their child being ready for school. Some focused on academics, such as being able to write their name, or knowing the ABC’s and 123’s, while others felt that social aspects were much more important. My personal thinking leads me to believe that even if a child does not have great social or academic skills it is all the more reason to put them into preschool so they can learn those skills. I think that children learn a lot from being around other children and especially if they have an attentive adult to look after them and encourage learning. When I worked in a Head Start classroom years ago it was obvious that some of the children were socially and academically behind some of their peers, however, I was very glad that they had started school because they were able to be in a safe learning environment and had the opportunity to improve. So even though some of the children were not ready for school it still benefited them greatly. It seems to me that the people who set the standards of readiness have the most say in what a child “should” be able to do by a certain age, but I don’t think any standards are going to be appropriate for all children. There are always going to be outliers but it does necessarily mean they should be held back until they fit into an ideal standard. The National Education Goals Panel defined readiness in 1990. They use multiple domains to access children. According to the reading these domains are, “(a) physical well-being and motor development, (b) social−emotional development, (c) approaches toward learning, (d) language and emergent literacy, and (e) cognitive skills, including mathematics.” The standards being used came from The Common Core State Standards Initiative, which covers Kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Culture can play a big role in how a child responds to standardized tests or assessments. If a child does not speak English fluently or comes from a culture where social interactions are less or more important than academics these standards may not benefit the child. The standards end up putting the child at a disadvantage because it is not a standard for a typical child in their own culture. The United States is full of people from all over the world, so these standards should have some way of accommodating these children. I can not speak for all cultures, but here in Hawaii I see a lot of Marshallese children having difficulty with math and reading, but they tend to excel when it comes to music and socializing. I am not sure how we could make adaptations for each and every culture in the U.S because there are a wide variety of cultures in this country. I’m interested in hearing some of the ideas that others have on this topic.
Hi Jeanette, I really enjoyed your post. I liked how you have mentioned the work Sampling or the Pearson's program. I too though that it was a clever program. i never worked with it yet as far preschools goes, but I do have a course from college on Pearson and it seem pretty effective. I really enjoyed your comment on how the work sample is more holistic than the screener in regards to working with children on development, I think your absolutely right. My question to you though would be how could you make the screeners work more holistically toward the children's development? the reason i ask this is though I am against screeners, they do in a way incorporate knowledge some knowledge to teachers, so I am wondering if the screeners were to improve could they be beneficial to children? I also wanted to add the I appreciate your thought on readiness. As i want through our classes blogs we all including myself pretty much said the same thing . However yours caught my eye because not only did you mention the children but you also mention the family. I believe that is also a great part of the child being ready for the next level. The reason I agree with you is because the child's first interaction with another is his or her parents and or family . So my question to you would be how would you ensure the families readiness for the child's next level of education? Thank you for a very delightful and interesting post Aloha Cori.
ReplyDeleteHi Jeanette!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you! After watching the Work Sampling Method and comparing it to the screeners from last weeks videos, I liked this approach much more. Like you said, the sampling method used “As Expected” or “Need Development” which means the child has or met or not met that certain developmental stage just yet and does not automatically “label” that child, like the other screeners. This helps teachers and the parents to focus on that certain developmental need for the child.
With the term “readiness” or “kindergarten readiness” there are different terms or definitions for many people. Some people think that children are ready for kindergarten once they know their ABC’s and can count 1-10 or writing their own name. Although a child can do all these things, does that mean they are really ready for kindergarten? I agree with you, I also think that if a child does not have much social or academic skills, they should have the opportunity to go to pre-school or attend a child-care setting where they will be able to learns those skills. My question for you would be, how can parents continue and help teachers support their child’s social and academic skills at home? Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Aloha Jeanette,
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how the wording of assessment can make a big difference, as you mentioned. This is an important idea we need to keep in mind as we write assessments of young children, that a simple word or phrase can have the power over how a child, family, school and/or community can see the person being assessed. It also shows that assessments go beyond the place and time and context of assessment, but also to the very words we use to describe what we see. Therefore, it requires us to be careful and thoughtful in all of our assessments, which can be tricky when a lot of these systems push for assessments to be "quick and easy."
As you already read Lyn's comments about inclusion, I think your comments about culture tie into this idea as well. It can be very tricky to find an assessment system that works for all the cultures we interact with here in Hawaii. However, this is one of the drawbacks to relinquishing so much control to an outside program, as it may not have as much information about the children, family, and communities they come from as we do. Therefore, how do we as individuals make those adjustments to ensure that each child is being assessed fairly? Mahalo!