Mud Glorious Mud!

Today was the first day of school after a rainy day.  Here in San Diego, it POURED rain on Monday (we had Monday off).  It is expected to rain the rest of the week; therefore, we need to take advantage of every opportunity to get outside.

One center, as I was arriving, was going on a walk around the apartment complex in which they are located.  The children were having a blast jumping in puddles!  It was very apparent that this teacher has no problem with the children getting wet and messy…they children were comfortable and uninhibited in their adventures and very matter-of-fact when they got back in their wet clothes and just began calmly changing.

Another center I was at obviously had a bit of a different outlook…I quickly changed that :)

When I went out to the yard, there were exactly 2 of the 45 children in the HUGE sandbox area.  There are typically about 20 children in there on a sunny day.

One little boy was filling his bucket with mud and told me, “I’m making strawberries!”

One little girl found a sinkhole that was in the back of the sandbox.  She was attempting to walk OVER it without walking THROUGH it by walking wide legged over the top.  It’s important to note that this sinkhole was not filled with water, it was simply a big dip in the sand.

They both looked up at me wide-eyed when I first approached but quickly got back to what they were doing when I crouched down next to the sink hole and wondered aloud how that happened.  That got the conversation going!

Eventually, this sink hole became the place where she was “making blueberries” (which I found funny only because of this post over here yesterday)  She was crouched over the edge of it watching, shovel in hand.  Occasionally she would reach out with the shovel and rearrange some of the mud, but I can say that making blueberries mostly involves crouching down and watching.

Her teacher came over and interrupted her play to “go get your jacket”.  Really unnecessary, but I wasn’t going to take the teacher’s authority away from her so I offered, “would you like me to watch over your blueberries while you go get your jacket?”  She nodded.

By the time she got back, there were 4 more girls hanging around, but they were NOT digging in the mud.  They looked at me as I watched her and her blueberries; then they pointed to the boy making strawberries and said, “We can’t play with that!  We can’t play with the water!”

To be fair, it wasn’t water…it was MUD!

I commented, “Sure we can!”

They looked at me warily.  They looked at me in amazement.  They hesitantly said, “No, we aren’t supposed to play with the water.”

I commented, “Sure, he’s making strawberries, she’s making blueberries.  It’s just water.”

Again, the looks of amazement!  The looks of awe!  The slow steps to go get their own buckets and shovels. 

They were a bit hesitant at first as they dug that first shovelful of dirt.  Then, they realized that I really meant what I said…you CAN play with the mud!  It’s okay!

Soon, there were more than the typical 20 children over there.  They were mostly making castles, their words, not mine, and a couple of other children were helping to make blueberries (still mostly involved crouching, watching, and on very rare occasion, rearranging the mud). 

It was a GLORIOUS sight!  I love mud!

What do you do with mud?

Let's round out the series

Okay, you have collected your evidence; organized it; and put it into your assessment. As I promised, I am going to now help you make a classroom curriculum that is can be made for each child in your classroom. If you really want a quality classroom, this should be your goal.

Anyone can throw a bunch of activities onto a lesson plan; but to make a quality lesson plan, it should take a little bit of thought. Rule number 1: put things on the lesson plan that are pertinent to the observations and goals you have for your children. Basically, don't put some activity on the lesson plan because it's cute and you got the idea from a book last night. Put some thought into your plans.

First, look for an area of your assessment that your children need to improve upon. (Let's say that your preschool children are scoring low on patterning). Maybe 40% of the children scored low.

Now, out of that 40%, choose 2-4 children to target in that area. These children are not the only ones that will be invited to this activity, but these are the children that you are going to use to base this activity on. (Let's say that three of your boys are inseparable and spend most of their time in the block area building roads). So, you are going to target these three boys.

Now, ask yourself this question: if these were the only three children in the classroom, what would I do to help them understand patterning? Well, we know they love block play and building roads. Maybe you have some of these. They would be perfect! Maybe you have a bunch of cars in solid colors. This will help them learn patterning.

Next, go to your lesson plan form. Find the area that this activity will be implemented: blocks; maybe manipulative or math; whatever works for you. Decide what the activity is. In the example we have been using (three boys who love the blocks and cars who need more patterning) I would do one of two or both of the following:

Block Area: Make roads for cars. Have cars go through the intersection by color patterns.
Manipulative: Use Neon Snap Track. Make patterns with the color of the road connections

Continue with all areas of development and areas of the lesson plan. Keep a list of the children in your classroom at hand as you are doing this as well. Make sure that there is at least one activity the will enhance each child's development daily (weekly for some activities); and make sure there is at least one activity a day that each child will enjoy.

This process will take a while to begin with. It may take you 3-4 times longer than when you just threw things on a paper. However, after a while, the process will become quicker and easier. As you get more comfortable with your observations and assessments, things will come quicker; ideas will come to you as you are doing an observation. Lesson plans will become easier and will actually right themselves. You will see the quality of your classroom soar! Work through this tough beginning; it is worth it!

Has anyone started using this process? How's it working?
Do you have any questions? How can I help?

Evidence is collected and organized...now what?

Well, now that you have collected your evidence and your observations here comes the fun part: putting it into your assessments.

Like I said, we use DRDPr; this will also work in any other assessment process as well. I do know that some assessments require you to sit the children down and test them one on one. This is not a true assessment of their abilities. I'm not endorsing you to go against your programs policies or procedures, but I am encouraging you to speak up and suggest a better way of doing things. I have seen so many other assessment pages and know that the same information you test for can be gotten through observation. Can they count to ten? Watch while they play; you'll quickly find out.

Do one assessment at a time. Take out one child's file and their assessment pages. If you know the child, you will quickly be able to complete these assessments; you could probably even do so without looking at the portfolio of observations and work. I go through and quickly mark all the items that I know without a doubt. After that I go through the portfolio and find what I need for each item to mark off.

As you go through the portfolio, you also want to mark on the assessment any evidence in the comment area (this way you can easily refer to the evidence if needed). If you find that there are items that you aren't sure of or that you have no evidence of you will know that this is something that you need to plan to do in the classroom and do some more observations.

Next, how to put this all together into a lesson plan. This will give you quality lesson plans that serves the needs of each individual child in the classroom.

You've collected all this evidence...now what?

Okay, so you have collected all this evidence. What do you do with it now? First, like I briefly mentioned, find a way to organize it and use it. My favorite way is to get one three-ring binder for each child with sheet protectors. You can get these donated by the families, especially around back-to-school sales. We put everything in chronologically. What's fun about this is that, if you start it when they start, you will have a fabulous book as a memory of their years with you when they leave. It's amazing to see how they grow through the pictures, how their artwork develops, and everything else. I put these out in the classroom so that the parents can look through them if they want, and the children can also take them out and look through them.

As the children get older, we let them decide some of the things that go in them. Sometimes we will tell them something has to go in. Other times we let them decide. For example, if we are doing self portraits we will most likely tell them that this has to go into their binder; but they are also given the option to do more than one so they can pick one to go in the book and the others can go home or be displayed. As they get older and more familiar with the binders, they will actually say, "Miss Jenni, I am made this picture of my favorite animal. I want it to go in my book." They now become participants in documenting their growth and development.

Now, on the back of the pages (not the front) I make sure to mark the date. I will also write any pertinent information: quotes that they said, indicators that it represents, other notes.

Now, when it is time to complete the assessments, Take out the binder!!! This is the best part. Go through the binder and, if you have collected enough evidence, you will have everything you need to determine where they fall in all areas of development. Can they count to 10? You probably have a written observation about him sitting at the table, grouping animals at the zoo, and telling you he has 12 elephants, 5 hippos, and 15 giraffes. Yep! He can count to 10! Can she write her name? Well, on the last 3 pieces of art work she has requested to put into the binder she has written the first 3 letters of her name consistently. So, she's getting closer. She also requested that these things get put into her binder, so she is obviously proud of her accomplishments (see how one item can meet several developmental areas?).

Collecting evidence is where it all starts. Making assessments easier to complete is the next step. Next, we are going to look at how we take these assessments and turn them into curriculum.

How do you collect and store observations and evidence?

Evidence and Observations

We use the DRDP-r to assess the children at our school. When I first began using the DRDP's more than 5 years ago, I hated it! I have only begun to appreciate their usefulness in the past 3 years. I finally figured out that it goes hand-in-hand with lesson planning. This week, we are going to take a look at how it does just that (in a blog sort of way).

Each component works separately on it's own; but, when used together, it will take your classroom to the next level of quality. Today, let's look at collecting evidence and observations. This is the most important, in my opinion, to the entire process. When collecting evidence, and observations are included as evidence, you want to make sure you are able to use what you have collected to represent a true assessment of a child's skill.

Observations must be made without emotion. A written observation should be a written description that could represent a picture:

example: Seth picked up a pencil with his right hand using a pincer grasp.

He then used the pencil on the paper in front of him and began to write at the top left corner. He wrote S then e then an h. He looked at what he wrote then put a horizontal line across the vertical line of the h.

Seth turns to the teacher and exclaims, "Look teacher. I wrote my name."

Please note, I didn't write the teacher's response. It doesn't matter what or how she responded to this observation. Also note that I kept emotions out of it. Here is an example of an observation I would not accept.

example: Seth is very happy today because he can write his name. He excitedly gets a pencil and begins to show the teacher. He writes Seh, forgetting the t. He notices that he missed the t and tries to repair it by making a line across the h. He gets very proud of his accomplishment and says "Look teacher. I wrote my name." The teacher says "Yes you did. Good job!"

We have no way to be inside Seth's head to know that he truly is happy or excited. Maybe he feels pressure from the parents to show off this skill and is a very good actor in showing his emotions...maybe not. Either way, you need to keep the emotions out of it for it to be true evidence to be used in the assessment.

There are many types of evidence to collect: observations, video clips, pictures, voice recordings, one sentence notes, documented conversations with parents, writing samples, art work, and other creative types of things that you may come up with.

When taking art work or writing samples from the children, be sure you clearly label when it was done on the back and any other notes (which hand did they use, did they make any comments about it while they were doing it, etc...).

When taking evidence from a parent, be sure to clearly write down what was said: "Mom came in on 5/12/08 and said that Kayla tied her shoes all by herself when she got dressed this morning. This is the first time mom has mentioned this. Kayla hasn't tied her shoes at school yet."

Make sure to keep this evidence in a well organized place. We keep them in 3-ring binders for the children to look through as well. We put everything in the books according to date. I am hoping to also move to a computer system where evidence will be able to be scanned or typed into a file for each child. In each file, there would also be sub-files for different categories of indicators: math, social, self-recognition, etc...

You want to have a variety of evidence collected. Don't just have all picture documentation, or all written observations. You want to have a good variety. I also have my teachers keep a checklist (actually two) to make sure that everyone is getting evidence collected for. The first one they turn in weekly to me that just shows me the type of evidence that has been collected (pictures, videos, written...). The second one they do monthly to make sure that at least two things have been collected per child in the month.

If you keep up with your evidence collecting, it will make your job so much easier when it comes to completing the assessments. We will talk about that later this week.

Please note: If you do not utilize the DRDP assessments, these notes will work for any assessments you do. This includes, but is not limited to, Denver Assessments, Galileo, PQA, ELSA, COR, and many more. They can all be utilized in pretty much the same way to study children in a natural environment to see what they can or can't do without testing them.

What do you use?