Kei Tua o te Pae/Assessment for Learning: Early Childhood Exemplars is a best-practice guide that will help teachers continue to improve the quality of their teaching.
The exemplars are a series of books that will help teachers to understand and strengthen children's learning. It also shows how children, parents and whānau can contribute to this assessment and ongoing learning.
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Showing 141 - 300 of 353 results for The Learning Corner
In this section
Noticing, recognising, and responding
Having clear goals
Documenting assessment
Everyday contexts
Protecting and enhancing the motivation to learn
Acknowledging uncertainty
Listening to children
Collective assessments
Keeping a view of learning as complex
Introduction - He kupu whakataki
"Exemplars are examples of assessments that make visible learning that is valued so that the learning community (children, families, whānau, teachers, and beyond) can foster ongoing and diverse learning pathways [emphasis added]."
Early Childhood Learning and Assessment Exemplar Project
Advisory Committee and Co-ordinators, 2002
This book is about one of the purposes and consequences of documented assessment in early childhood education. We know that…
In this project, assessment for learning is described as “noticing, recognising, and responding”. This description comes from Bronwen Cowie’s work on assessment in science classrooms (2000). It was useful to the teachers in her study, and early childhood teachers have found it useful as well. These three processes are progressive filters. Teachers notice a great deal as they work with children, and they recognise some of what they notice as “learning”. They will respond to a selection of what th…
Black, Paul and Wiliam, Dylan (1998). “Assessment and Classroom Learning”. Assessment in Education, vol. 5 no. 1, pp. 7–75.
Brooker, Liz (2002). Starting School: Young Children Learning Cultures. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Cole, Babette (1986). Princess Smartypants. London: H. Hamilton.
Cullen, Joy (1991). “Young Children’s Learning Strategies: Continuities and Discontinuities”. International Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 23 no. 1, pp. 44–58.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1996). Creativit…
What does “assessment for learning” look like for the strands in which the outcomes of the curriculum are organised: wellbeing, belonging, contribution, communication, and exploration? Part of that question is how do we decide 'what next?'. Margaret Donaldson (1992) says that education “is about suggesting new directions in which lives may go” (page 259). Assessment is part of that process. But the phrase “assessment for learning” suggests that we know what an appropriate next step mig…
Assessment for learning implies that we have some aims or goals for children’s learning. Te Whāriki provides the framework for defining learning and what is to be learned. The goals and indicative learning outcomes are set out in strands.
Some assessment will be documented, but most of it will not. There should be a balance between documented and undocumented interactions, and the 2 kinds of interaction should be in tune with each other.
The phrase "assessment for learning" implies an assumption that we develop ideas about "what next?". (The exemplars include many examples of planning from assessments.) Usually the child will decide “what next?”. For example, a child may decide whether to repeat an attempt on…
Étienne Wenger (1998) explains that:
"Students need:
places of engagement
materials and experiences with which to build an image of the world and themselves
ways of having an effect on the world and making their actions matter.
From this perspective the purpose of educational design is not to appropriate learning and institutionalize it into an engineered process, but to support the formation of learning communities ..."
page 271
Teaching and learning events can be designed around…
How do we define “competence”?
How does our assessment documentation help the children to develop their sense of themselves as capable and confident learners and communicators?
Looking at some samples of our assessments in recent weeks, what kinds of learning have we been documenting? Have we recognised and responded to the kinds of learning that we value? Do we want to extend or change this focus? Do these samples reflect the cultural perspectives of the families within our centre?
Taking a sel…
Child’s name: Sabine
Date: 30 January
Teacher: Shelley
Belonging
Mana whenua
Yesterday Sabine asked me to help her make a swing. She had seen one on High Five. Sabine described the swing that Charlie used to swing away. We found a hoop and hooked it up on the swing frame. It was not quite what Sabine wanted but it was time to finish so we decided to work on it the next day.
Today Sabine sketched the swing. We collected ropes, clips, and chains and experimented with heights.
Sabine wanted…
Today a group of boys came out from the back room, all dressed up.
They asked if they could use the water paints and promptly got to work with the paint brushes, applying lipstick, rouge, eye shadow and nail polish.
Giving children the opportunity to explore what it might be like to be someone or something else is important in developing their understanding of themselves and how they, and others fit in to the world around them.
The next day ...I thought that their interest in dressing up coul…
10 May
He mahi uaua te whakawhanui i ngā kutikuti, heoi ano ka ako au, titiro ...
Āta titiro, āta whakaaro, whakarite ngā kutikuti. Katahi, tapahia! Anana!
Whaea Mel
Te pai hoki o ou mahi i te rangi nei e Tama!
I kōrero mai a Whaea Re-nee kei te kaha koe ki te parakatihi i o mahi tapahia me ngā kutikuti tēnei wiki Mandela. I kite koe i ahau e tapahia ana i ngā ahau i te taha tepu, kātahi i noho koe ki taku taha hei matakitaki ...
I whakaatu au me pehea te tapahia tika, te mau tika o n…
Children are developing a wider horizon of interest beyond the early childhood setting and beyond their home settings.
Learning dispositions and working theories include developing an interest in and a recognition of new learning identities or “possible selves”8 and a capacity to “read” the environment and therefore to navigate between different forms of individuality and competence as defined in different communities. For some children, this involves navigating between te ao Māori and te ao wh…
In this domain of Contribution/Mana Tangata, the emphasis is on the recognition of (and action towards) children’s rights and responsibilities, together with early perceptions of and responses to diversity, inclusion, and fairness. Assessments give value to and record actions that are associated with children’s increasing confidence to stand up for themselves and for others when they perceive that justice is threatened. Creating an environment that is characterised by mutual respect supports chi…
May
I approach you Finn as you are working at the art table; you are deep in thought and using a lot of concentration while you work. I wait quietly for a bit and then ask, “What are you doing there, Finn?” “A dragonfly.”
Finn, you have such attention to detail and you take time to study the book, which is open at the end of the table, before you go back to your drawing. I ask you if you have ever seen a dragonfly and you tell me, “At my friend Olivia’s, she lives away way in Tauranga. She…
Child's name: Jorjia 2.2yrs
Date: September
Teacher: Caroline
Examples or cues
A Learning Story
Belonging
Mana whenua
Taking an Interest
I was sitting down by the reels, writing in the infants’ daily books. Jorjia came over. Jorjia: “See my turtle.”
Caroline: “You’ve got a turtle,” as she carefully laid “the turtle” in my hands.
Jorjia: “Look, my turtle.”
Caroline: “What shall we do with your turtle?” Jorjia: “Put it here,” pointing to the plank.
I placed it down carefully.
Jor…
Child’s name: Tia
Date: 16 August
Teacher: kuia (grandmother)
A learning story
Belonging
Mana whenua
Taking an Interest
Tia woke at 6.30 a.m. I met her in the hallway and asked her if she wanted to come into my bed upstairs. She said yes. I told her there was a surprise up there for her and she was to leave the light off. We climbed into bed and I asked her to look out the window. The surprise was the Southern Cross pointers, which were still bright in the sky. I told her the traditional n…
Veins, wonderful veinsNovember
This morning in the hospital playroom we talked about veins in our bodies. Jessica dressed up like a doctor and looked to see if she could find Shani’s veins ... DISCOVERY! Jessica found a vein on the back of Shani’s hand. “Could medicine go into this vein?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “The doctors might think that was a good vein to put medicine into.”
“OK, I’ll be sick, OK?” suggested Shani as she climbed into bed.
“OK – and I’ll put some medicine into your…
Children develop many goals for their learning, goals that are often hidden from the adult observer. Children frequently appear to “change track” as they work, and on many occasions, their goal is only apparent to adults in retrospect (and not always then). We have to find ways in which children can tell their own stories or be their own assessors without involvement in formal assessment. Not all children can do this, so we have to get to know the children well in order to notice and recognise t…
