Jump to content
Home
Forum
Articles
About Us
Tapestry
This is the EYFS Staging Site ×

Assessment, Outcomes And The Young Child


Guest Wolfie

Recommended Posts

I went on an extemely interesting course at Early Excellence on Friday, run by Professors Chris Pascal and Tony Bertram. It was all about a new assessment scale for young children that they are currently developing called The AcE Scale. They have identified that there ar four "critical domains" in early learning - skills and attitudes which are proven to be vitally important if children are to become successful and motivated learners in later life. These are:

 

Linguistic and communication skills

Attitudes and dispositions

Social competence and self esteem

Emotional well-being

 

Their overall message was that these are the most important areas that we need to work on with babies and young children - their AcE scale provides a tool for assessing these skills and planning from that initial assessment to develop the skills and attitudes effectively. They are still at the pilot stage with the scale at the moment, I think they are hoping to launch the final package in autumn of this year. You can find a bit more information about it here:

 

http://crec.co.uk/index.php?option=com_con...7&Itemid=34

 

I found their arguments and philosophies behind the development of the scale compelling and have been mulling everything over all weekend! It seems to be a very sound method of assessment which also provides the evidence of outcomes of children's learning and development that Children's Centres are now being asked to provide.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That sounds really interesting Wolfie and not dissimilar from my own feelings. For years now I have felt strongly that if a child at our nursery was happy, settled and secure; felt good about themselves'; was able to communicate their feelings and thoughts whilst able to listen to those of others then we could consider that we had done a good job in preparing them for the more formal learning that school will offer. Its about being child centred really isn't it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's exactly what their message was, it was SO refreshing! They also mentioned some hot and cold indicators at the age of 5 for future success in SATs etc......

 

Hot items? Emotional well-being, persistence, being able to work alongside others and being able to communciate effectively through speaking and listening.

 

Cold items? Being able to count to 10 and having a good phonetic knowledge........... :o

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is a chapter in "Contemporary Perspectives on Early Childhood Curriculum" all about the project which I found fascinating which hopefully will influence Early Years policy in schools. http://books.google.com/books?id=RzMDV5VMD...eZw6w#PPA241,M1

 

Hopefully they will return in the summer term (when cash is available for more training xD:o )

Edited by Marion
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. (Privacy Policy)