ECE 430 Week 4 Discussion Questions

ECE 430 Week 4 DQ 1&2

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1-

In the Week 4 Case Study: Assessment/Resources, Mrs. Ashland was asked to be part of a shared decision of assessment selection.

Mrs. Ford, the Director of the center, asks her to use her knowledge of developmentally appropriate teaching approaches to evaluate specific assessment tools and practices that may be used center-wide.  Mrs. Ford identifies the following tools for Mrs. Ashland to research and use in her classroom to help inform her decision:

• Anecdotal Records
• Checklists 
• Rating scales
• Rubrics 
• Running Records

The textbook explores these assessments further and provides specific examples to use for administration. Using the information gained in the case study, as well as the information and examples presented in the chapter, administer two of assessments of your choice.  You may choose to administer to a child that you know and have permission to conduct an example assessment with, or you may use a child from one of the case studies in your text.

For this discussion, you will submit your reflections of the administration, addressing the following:  

1. What do you think the strengths of using this assessment are?
2. What did you find challenging when administering this assessment?  What is your action plan to improve this?
3. After reviewing your findings, what did your results conclude?
4. Based on your analysis of your assessment data, what are three recommendations that you have for the curriculum for the learner going forward?  How will you use the assessment data to make instructional decisions?

Guided Response: Review your classmate’s posts.  Reply to one of your classmates that choose an alternative assessment that you think is the least effective based on your teaching philosophy and information gained from the textbook.  Conduct a 10 minute observation using this tool.  Provide a response to your peer including completion of the following prompts:

1. In administering this assessment, I liked…
2. In thinking about how I will use this in my career, I plan to…
3. I wonder if this tool could be improved with/by…

DQ 2-

This week Mrs. Ashland has been asked to be a part of a shared decision-making opportunity in an effort to adopt a center wide informal assessment tool that is developmentally appropriate for preschool children.  Use this information to help develop your assignment

Read the 3 headings and scenarios which present various current controversies in early education.  Choose one of the arguments and then choose a side of the argument to defend using your content knowledge, knowledge of developmentally appropriate assessment practices presented in Chapter 5, critical thinking and personal philosophy.

Heading 1: 
Are Formal Standardized Tests acceptable to use in preschool?

Heading 2: 
Do you think teachers are adequately prepared to use assessment data to make instructional decisions?

Heading 3: 
Should there be a form of on-going informal assessment at the infant/toddler levels?

Guided Response:  Review your classmate’s posts. Choose two to argue respectfully for the opposing side.  Be sure to justify your ideas with course content and knowledge.  Remember to use respectful netiquette, but remember that challenging others’ thinking through disagreements allows all individuals to better understand varying perspectives.