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.