The purpose of this professional learning is for teachers to view and reflect on examples of how one teacher makes judgments using the Continua of learning and development.
Download video
Video transcript
Jo Darbyshire
Kindergarten teacher
To make the collection of evidence manageable, I think we’ve tried something different every year for the last few years. This year what we’re doing is we have got a tracking tool, so we’re trying to make sure that we’re gathering evidence in every learning and developmental area or that we haven’t missed … there’s not big gaps in what we’re doing.
So that’s a good way of tracking how many observations we’ve got of each area and for each child. And it also makes us aware of any children that we might be missing that are just quietly getting on with their kindy day and we just haven’t collected any evidence of what they’re doing yet. So the tracking tool helps.
The photos I have found have been an efficient way of giving evidence of the learning and development, and we need to be efficient because you have lots of bits of paper scattered all over the place.
The other thing that I try and do is sit down on a reasonably regular basis and gather all the evidence and put it into that child’s folders or collections of their work or whatever I’m using, because otherwise you can face a month’s worth of paperwork and it’s all over the place
The evidence that we gather from the children helps us to plan our program and our future learning by helping us to see what the children are interested in, helping us to see the learning that has been significant for them so that we can perhaps build and extend on that learning
And it also helps us to see that within our program there might be some opportunities that we haven’t offered to the children or that we haven’t had a strong emphasis on within the program, so we would do intentional teaching around those areas.
When I’m looking at trying to work out where the children’s phase of learning would sit within the continua [continuum], I look at the examples that have been recorded in the continua [continuum], and then I would look at the data that I’ve gathered of the children’s learning, and that helps me to compare the examples in the continua [continuum] to the items that I’ve collected and see whether the children are at the emerging, exploring or extending phase.
Another thing that sometimes helps me to make judgments of a child’s learning and development might be conversations that I have with my colleagues. Formally if there’s something that I’m just not sure about or I just need a second opinion on, sometimes I’ll ask Sonia who teaches next door and we’ll find a time where she might be able to come in and observe the child for a few minutes.
Or I might explain to her what I’m seeing and what I’m thinking and she’ll give me her interpretation of what’s going on as well. And that’s a really valuable way of helping me to fine tune what I’m thinking, I guess, and to just clarify exactly where that child’s sitting in their learning and development.
- Last updated:
- 19 April 2024
