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CHCPR510A: Design, implement and evaluate programs and care routines for children

Monitor and evaluate programs

Contents

Adapt plans according to children’s responses, conditions of the day and spontaneously arising opportunities 4

Adapt plans according to children’s responses, conditions and opportunities 4

Planning 7

Gather and document information using a range of methods in order to assess the progress and achievements of each child 9

Types of evaluation 9

Holistic evaluation 11

Principles of evaluation 12

Monitoring and assessing children’s progress 13

Setting goals for children 19

Use or establish opportunities to gather feedback and comments from all those involved 22

Involving the stakeholders 22

Identify and apply appropriate criteria for evaluating the overall program 27

Appropriateness of evaluation 27

Include children’s responses and comments as part of the evaluation process 29

Ensure programs are evaluated regularly and in accordance with service guidelines 30

Use evaluation information towards further design of programs31

Planning for the future 31

2 Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9400 © NSW DET 2010

Adapt plans according to children’s responses, conditions of the day and spontaneously arising opportunities

Adapt plans according to children’s responses, conditions and opportunitiesAll educators spend a considerable amount of time putting together a program based on the observed interests, strengths and emerging skills of the children and often not only gather many resources but come up with interesting ways to present learning opportunities to children.

But no matter how much time and effort is expended the program is still dependent on the children and sometimes things that are out of our control – like the weather. Sometimes the interests of children wane and they will move quickly from one idea to another. They may not be approach a learning opportunity that you thought would be a hit. This doesn’t mean that you have gotten their interest wrong, just that maybe something else has captured their attention today. Sometimes we need to remind children of their interest.

Jonte and Will have spent about twenty minutes, just before home time, exploring how they can make shadows on the ground using their hands and other parts of their body. Wendy, educator has decided to further this interest by introducing an overhead projector and some simple objects to project shadows on a wall.

Wendy has set up the projector and arranged a number of interestingly shaped objects on a small table beside it. She places a shell on the projector and leaves it switched on so Jonte and Will might notice it.

The children arrive and Jonte and Will race over to the dramatic play area and begin to engage in a lively game of superheroes.

Instead of being disappointed that the boys haven’t continued their exploration of shadows, she approaches them and gently reminds them of the shadow play they

Diploma of Children’s Services: CHCPR510A: Reader LO 9400 3© NSW DET 2010

were engaged in yesterday. Asking questions about how they made the shadows and what shapes they made. She then invited them to continue this shadow exploration and demonstrated how to use the overhead projector to make shadows. Jonte and Will picked up each object in turn and proceeded to make some shadows. Jonte started to sort the objects into groups according to the shape of their shadow, round ones, square ones and ones with lots of spikes.

It’s okay to remind children of their interests from previous days and invite them to continue it. We need to remember that it’s also okay for them to change their interest and move onto something else.

It would be easy to feel that children should follow the plans we as educators have so carefully compiled but we need to remember that like us children can move quickly from one interest to another when they see something else that looks intriguing. A simple comparison is the TV flicker – I’m sure you all know one, a person who flicks from one channel to another even though they may be watching a show. Suddenly they’ll see a show that they also want to watch and so may swap back and forth.

As educators we need to be really flexible, adapt or change plans depending on the children’s response, things that just ‘pop up’ or when conditions change. I’m sure you have all had great provisions planned for outside at some stage when the weather has prevented them. We need to be able to adapt our plans to cope with this.

Likewise we need to be flexible so that we can take advantage of the simple things that arise throughout the day, like the children finding a lizard or a parent arriving with a tortoise they found on the road.

Activity 1

Our world is an exciting and ever changing place as is the children’s lives and interests. Our programs need to be flexible and adaptable and able to be changed at short notice to meet individual and group interests, strengths and emerging skills.

The planning cycleLet’s look at how we can go about monitoring children’s progress in children’s services. This can be represented as a four part cycle that keeps flowing in a circle.


Cycle of monitoring children’s progress

Case study: Naomi – monitoring children’s progress

Observation of Naomi Naomi, watched with a frowned brow as the educator, Kevin wrote his daily reports on the sofa. Naomi stood on her tiptoes to peer closely as Kevin wrote. When Naomi pointed to the reports, Kevin asked, 'would you like to do some writing too' Naomi nodded and smiled. Kevin handed Naomi a small clipboard and pen. Naomi grasped the pen in her right fist. She made wide, sweeping squiggles on the top page. She stopped and peeked a look at what Kevin was doing. She then flipped to a clean page on the clipboard and continued writing, A loud noise distracted her and she dropped the pen and walked away to investigate the sound.

Evaluation / interpretation of Naomi Naomi imitates the adults actions Naomi has begun to understand that written language in meaningful Naomi recognises how writing tools work

Goal / objective for Naomi We now know that Naomi is interested in adult imitation as well as written language, where to next? We will continue to provide Naomi with lots of real items 'to enhance her role play and interest in writing'.

Planning for Naomi Dramatic play― shops with real food containers, play money and carry bags. Put up some signs showing prices and provide blank cards and markers for children to make own prices and other signs. Provide small note pads and pencils to record shopping lists.

Remember when we evaluate, interpret or summarise a child’s observation we are making an assessment about that child and their developmental progress, Assessment and evaluation are both interchangeable. Both methods allow educators to monitor children’s progress.


Evaluation is an integral part of this cycle and it can be used as an observation to start another round of planning. This allows us to continually build on children’s interests, strengths and emerging skills.

Planning The program offered within the children’s service should be based on observed interests, strengths and emerging skills of children. In the previous learning outcome we looked at gathering observations of the children and interpreting these to develop a development ‘picture’ of the child and to then use this information as a basis for setting goals for the children to work towards.

We now need to use this information to plan for the children.

The key to the planning stage is organisation and flow of information. Once you have completed your observations, interpreted your recordings and made your evaluation; set goals for the child you now need to plan and implement learning opportunities that will extend each child’s interests, strengths and emerging skills. By planning a program that truly reflects the children’s interests and emerging skills, we have the opportunities enrich the children’s lives through learning.

To make planning successful, you need to reflect on how your program information will flow. What does your observation system look like? How will you record the learning opportunities or provisions on the written program? What about your goals and objectives – where will these be recorded? Have you included provisions that can be implemented to achieve individual goals? Are the provisions coded or marked in some way so that they can be linked back to a focus child’s goals?

In order to answer these questions, you need to be organised. You need to have developed an observation system to gather information about the children. You need to have a program format that all educators are familiar with and is simple to use. You need to have clear links to observations, goals and the program. You need to have an effective method of evaluation so that you not only have opportunity to reflect on the children’s response but have a tool to plan for next time.

You will need to collect information that will make up the program from all those involved, including educators and even children. Many services have their own system or approach for collecting this information. The most common method is for the educators in the room to meet for a programming meeting, discuss their observations, interpretations and goals for the children. They will then formulate the program together including ideas and planning suggestions for individual children and the whole group. It’s interesting to note that sometimes a provision planned for a particular child will be a great learning opportunity for other


children within the group. This enables the program to flow across the whole group.

Other options for gathering information are:

• Making the program format available the week before and allow educators to fill it in as the week progresses.

• Keeping a programming notebook, where educators can write down the provisions they need planned and for whom.

• Making note in the room’s day book against events you want to follow up on and include possible planning suggestions and then checking this prior to programming.

• Individually asking other educators what they need programmed and writing it down on the program yourself.

Ideally the most effective way to program and plan is a group collaborative approach so planning meetings where all educators come together are best. It’s important to include children in the programming so ask for their opinion and ideas on the program. This can be done very informally or can be part of morning meeting and discussions with the children about what they would like to do today.

A good program has space to record evaluations of what happened and why, how the opportunities for children can be improved or added to so that children’s development is enhanced. It should also have space to record ideas for future planning. When our formats allow us to record this information, evaluations not only complete the planning cycle but becoming the starting point for planning to continue. Our evaluations become the observation for the next round of planning.

But remember no matter what approach we take to planning it needs to be based on the children and their development.

Activity 2


Gather and document information using a range of methods in order to assess the progress and achievements of each child

Types of evaluationThere are two types of evaluation that are commonly used when working with children. They are formative evaluation and summative evaluation.

Formative evaluation gathers information over time so that we increase our familiarity with the general direction and nature of what we are evaluating. Gathering evaluation information at the end of each provision and at the end of each day rather than at the end of the week is more effective formative evaluation.

Summative evaluation takes place at the end of a set period of time but we use information from formative evaluation to inform it. A developmental summary of an individual child is a summative evaluation.

We evaluate all aspects of our lives and we constantly make individual evaluations during the day when we are working with children.

For example: A child is not eating their lunch, so you evaluate the situation and decide on a response:

• the child is unwell and you will closely monitor this child throughout the day

• the child doesn’t like their lunch• the child isn’t hungry.

The evaluation then guides your response to the situation. You will make dozens of such evaluations each day. Once your have designed and planned the program, you need to look at its effectiveness for meeting the children’s requirements.

There is a lot of emphasis on evaluation, it is the ‘final link in the chain’ and crucial to future planning and programming. It is often the only time that we are able to


reflect on what we have done, in order to try to do something better. Evaluation allows us to focus on the effectiveness of what we have planned or not planned and it gives us directions for the future. It also allows us to be involved in a self-improvement cycle, so that we can grow and develop as effective educators.

Without reflection, we would go on making the same mistakes. When working with children, making the same mistakes is unacceptable, because it means we are not providing them with the best possible learning environment.

Evaluation requires us to look beyond whether the children enjoyed themselves or not. You need to look at the purpose of planning. That is, were objectives, outcomes or benchmarks met? You then need to decide how to progress.

As with monitoring children’s progress, evaluation is sometimes subjective. As people are different and have different expectations, different people see different things in others. We need to balance subjectivity with our child development knowledge so that we really get to know the children in our care. Setting and evaluating objectives and goals allows us to review our focus, thus helping us to provide a richer picture of each child and the program we have developed.

I’ve heard many within children’s services say that when following emergent curriculum we no longer need to set goals for children or to plan for them as everything should evolve from the children. This is not true, whilst our program evolves from the children, we are the educators and need to make decisions on the direction of children’s learning, which provisions and experiences will provide them with the most valid and enhancing learning opportunities and we still need to be able to validate their learning and development. To do this we must set goals and plan for the children. These goals and planning will be more flexible and be based on interests and strengths instead of needs but they will still be needed and regulatory and quality assurance bodies will require evidence of them.

By incorporating evaluation into our daily practice we are making ourselves accountable and responsible to the children, their families, the service staff and educators, and the wider community. This helps us to develop good communication skills, effective reflective thinking and to be able to conduct critical analysis. By developing these skills, we enhance our practices and become excellent educators of children.

There are four main forms of evaluation that we use in children’s services – long term, short term, incidental and immediate. Let’s look at what we evaluate, for example, over the long term and the short term:


As you can see there is a lot of overlap and we need to complete a lot of evaluation during the day. So what do we need to think about when we evaluate? There are many aspects to conducting effective evaluation including:

• our own actions• the whole day• the children’s responses• individual, small group and large group provisions and experiences• other educators and staff• parents comments or actions• layout of the environment• suitability of the provisions and resources

Holistic evaluation Evaluating the program includes evaluating what you have planned for the children as well as reflecting on spontaneous or unexpected occurrences. Holistic evaluation considers the routine of the day (what you expected to happen in the day), the provisions, learning opportunities and resources provided and the environment in which the program takes place (both indoors and outdoors).

The evaluation needs to cover all aspects of the program, so you should be evaluating the planned provisions and learning opportunities but also recording feedback on how the day flowed, how the program worked as a whole and individuals and groups within it.


Aspects of evaluation 1

Aspects of evaluation 2

Principles of evaluationThere are a number of guiding principles or issues that will influence our evaluations and the service methodology. Let’s explore them briefly.

Matching philosophy, program approach and values Like any other aspect of children’s services there will be strong opinions on evaluation, how to do it, who is responsible, the types of records to be keep etc. And evaluation, like every other aspect of the program needs to match the service’s philosophy and program approach and reflect the values of the service and users.

All educators and stakeholders need to concur about what is important and how evaluation will be recorded within the service.

If the service philosophy and programming approach embraces a hands on learning environment and an emergent program based on children’s interests then the evaluation process needs to reflect this. There would be a written program but it may take the format of a journal or day book and it would be flexible.

Case study: SallySally, educator has provided an art opportunity based on the children exploring the colour green. She has provided many objects to look at in a large variety of green shades, green paint, blue and yellow paint so that children can create green, white and black paint to create shades of green.


Joseph, 4, began to paint. First using blue and then painting over the top of it with yellow – creating green. He seemed to be fascinated by this and continued changing from using blue first to yellow to see if the same colour was made. Joseph then began to use the white paint with the blue to create more new colours. He then moved onto using white and black. Joseph stayed with this exploration of black and white for 20 minutes and never went back to exploring green. He created a painting of lines that started from white through varying shades of grey to finally black. When asked about the painting, he explained that it was a picture of how white becomes black.

As the service values exploration, Sally evaluated the provision based on how Joseph approached his task of creating colour and shade and his investigating method of does the placement of colour first have an effect on the colour made – does it matter if it is blue first or yellow, does it still make green? She noted his fascination for creating shades of grey

A service where children need to complete the provision as planned and must achieve the goal might note that Joseph achieved the objective of exploring green as he discovered that blue and yellow mixed together makes green. As the objective has been achieved and how he did it is all the information needed for the evaluation. Sally as an educator in a service where learning and discovering occurs collaboratively will evaluate Josephs extension of this provision and follow up on his reasoning behind the painting.

Monitoring and assessing children’s progressWe are aware that in order to conduct an assessment of the child, we need observations. We need to now consider what assessment is and how we are going to use the observations to draw our conclusions about each child’s development, interests and progress. Let’s re-examine what assessment is.

Assessment and children’s progressRemember we’re not talking about assessment that you as a adult learner may experience. Your perception of assessment may be of tests, exams and assignments. These are all designed to gather information about your level of learning or skills.

However, in children’s services assessment must not become ‘tests’ or exercises where children are compared against one another and then rated in a scale, This is why checklists and rating scales are not considered to be useful stand-alone


methods of observation. Testing may happen in schools as children get older, but there is no place for such rigid assessments in early childhood settings.

In early childhood services we gather information about the child in an open-ended manner, We should use various methods to gather information and have no set ‘tests’ or assessment tasks that are used to find out what the children know or can do. Occasionally, formal assessment tools may be used by specialist intervention workers to diagnose additional needs or specific disabilities. Such tools are rarely used by educators working within children’s services. You might use a language and speech checklist to identify a particular language/speech issue. A speech pathologist may then use a more formal assessment task to identify what the specific problem is, so appropriate treatment may be developed.

In children’s services monitoring children’s progress is about using observations and gathering information and then considering the child’s skills and behaviour in relation to what we know of ‘typical’ development. This assessment is often put into a more formal developmental record – a standardised document used by the service to summaries the skills the child has and how the child is developing overall. A developmental record contains a summary and interpretations of your observations.

Open-ended types of assessment are the most appropriate for young children: Such assessments are qualitative in nature, allowing children to demonstrate what they know, in situations that are familiar and comfortable to them, and permitting educators to document their progress, interests and relationships. Open-ended assessment uses a number of approaches for collecting information about children’s performance such as observation and recording, gathering background and contextual information about the child and collecting and analysing representative samples of children’s work.

Let’s look at some terminology before we move on to how we can assess the progress of a child.

When we record our observations we need to interpret them using our child development knowledge. We often call this interpretation the evaluation, although many services are now using the term reflection. Without the evaluation our recorded observations lack validity. When we have collected a number of recorded observations over a period of time we often develop a summary. This identifies a child’s development in a range of areas. These are often called developmental summaries.

By using our recorded observations and developmental summaries we are able to monitor children’s progress. Our child development knowledge helps us to understand what expected development at particular stages is and can highlight when a child is slower to reach an expected milestone.


Obviously when this occurs we are then able to provide opportunities for the child to practice and master skills so as to extend their development. We can also gather information about the child’s progress from our discussions with educators and families. Theses discussions help us to know more about the children in our care. We learn about individual differences, the nature of the child and what is typical development in a particular family.

Whilst it is important to know where the child stands developmentally our programs should be focused on using positives – strengths and interests of children. This doesn’t mean we ignore the emerging skills of children or areas where they are having a little difficulty. We should use their interests and strengths to assist this.

Case study: Luke Luke, 3 yrs, has a fascination for sharks and can talk to his educators seemingly for hours on the topic. He is a relatively shy child and is reluctant to talk in a small group situation and panics if the educators suggest that he tell news.

Today Luke has brought in a model of a shark and a set of shark jaws and has Sara, the educator, cornered where he is giving her a blow by blow description of how the razor sharp teeth rip food apart. Luke is very animated when talking about the shark so Sara suggests that he might like to show the jaw bones for news as a few of the children have asked can they have a look.

Standing next to Sara, Luke holds up the jaw bones and with her careful prompting he quietly begins to retell how the shark rips at food.

We need to always look at this developmental knowledge with an open mind as the experiences of many programs and educators are now challenging what we have always considered to be ‘typical’ development.

Piaget proposed that children learn in a very hands on manner – the need to touch and make concrete connections to assist learning and that more formal or abstract thoughts develop after children leave the early childhood environment.

To illustrate how this common belief is being challenged, click on the following link and discover how Laura, 14months, has demonstrated her abstract thinking capacities.

http://www.bhsu.edu/education/edfaculty/dcalhoon/laura.html

Amazing isn’t it. Laura even though unable to communicate through verbal language has used her body language to show her understandings of watches and test a hypothesis.


Child development knowledge is there to guide educators and assist us to provide effective learning opportunities for children not as an absolute.

ChecklistsChecklists have been traditionally used to monitor children’s progress. They are quick to use and provide a list of skills that are expected to be present at particular ages and stages.

They can be useful when you are trying to clarify development of expected skills or behaviours. They can provide some reassurance to educators and families that children are meeting the expected developmental milestones at appropriate ages and stages.

However, they do have a limited use and do little to help us plan effectively for children in terms of their interests, strengths and emerging skills. When children are interested in particular things it is likely that they will develop the necessary skills listed on a checklist as a means to an end, rather than the skill or behaviour being an end in itself.

Portfolios Portfolios can be a far richer source of information when monitoring children’s progress.

A portfolio is a collection of observations, reflections or interpretations and samples of work for individual children.

Portfolio on display

Activity 3

We can think of a portfolio as a kind of scrapbook or photo album that records the progress and learning opportunities of the program and its participants. Portfolio assessment has become widely used in educational settings as a way to examine and measure progress, by documenting the process of learning or change as it occurs.


Many children’s services collect samples of the children’s work. These samples may be displayed around the service or put into scrapbook, but the power of these ‘work samples’ as assessment tools is often overlooked.

Documenting children’s progress requires the collection of large amounts of data, leading to problems of organising the data and communicating conclusions about it to those who have a stake in the assessment of young children. Increasingly early childhood educators are using portfolios to organise and store assessment information in order to develop a profile of each child’s learning.

Click on the following link to see some great examples of how children’s work has been documented.

http://www.smartstartecec.com/ follow the link to children’s work

As more services move towards emergent and interest /project based curriculum’s and programs more emphasis is being placed on displaying the children’s work and documenting their progress and development via work samples.

Read the article Children’s Work: Visibility leads to Value which can be found at http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr274.shtml

Not only does it discuss how to document children’s work but the process behind children’s learning.

Developing a portfolioWe are able to develop a portfolio in a number of ways. You need to consider how you will collect the data and where you will keep the children’s portfolios. You should encourage both families and children to add to their portfolios and to make decisions on what goes into it.

Activity 4

Carers working on portfolios


Once we have developed a profile of the child through our various observations and summaries, we need to use the information to enhance the children’s development and learning. We can use the information to set goals or outcomes for the children and ourselves.

Goals and outcomes In our everyday lives we set goals to some degree. We might set a goal to save money for a holiday, an overseas trips or a special purchase. When studying, you may have set yourself goals to complete your course within a given timeframe. Some people are more goal orientated than others. Goals provide us with a focus. They give us something to work towards.

The term goal is not used by all children’s services; other common terms are objective and outcomes. In this unit we are assuming goals, objectives and outcomes mean the same thing and symbolise that you are working towards something.

The difference in setting goals for children is that you are going to work hard to help the children achieve the goals you have set for them. These goals will come from your understanding of where the children are at now, what they are confident doing, what skills and understanding are still emerging and what their interests are.

When setting goals we need to be realistic in the particular time frame.

Time framesGoals are generally divided into two types – long term goals and short term goals. When defining long and short term goals, you need to look at time frames that are relative, not set in stone.

If you work in a preschool, the short term goals you develop for particular children could be achieved in a week, and your long term goals achieved in a term. In OSHC, you may allow a short term goal to be worked on for a month and a long term goal for a year.

A rough guide could be that a short term goal is one that can be achieved in a day or a week. A long term goal is one that can be achieved in a month or up to a year or more. You need to consider the time frame in which you are working and the age range of the children to decide whether a goal is long term or short term.

Whether your goals are going to be long term or short term also depends on what t is you are working with the children to achieve. If a goal is ‘for the toddler to share equipment with others’ then this would be a long term goal as it will take time to achieve. If your goal is for ‘the preschooler to cut with scissors’, this would


be a short term goal as it might be achieved in a month with practise and guidance.

A short term goal is usually linked to a long term goal. Short term goals are the steps taken along the way to achieve the long term goal e.g. the short term goal ‘for a child to hold a marker using the tripod grip’ helps achieve the long term goal ‘for the child to be able to write letters.’

Setting goals for children The goals that you set for each child will sometimes be based on your understanding of their level of development. Because children are individuals they need individual goals. The goals we develop need to be realistic and achievable for the child.

There may be times when you may choose to set a goal for the whole group. This could happen when you see that children have a shared interest.

When the goals you set for children reflect their level of development they become achievable. Your knowledge of child development and your understanding of each child will help you to set realistic goals for children, their family and their environment. By implementing appropriate goals you will enhance the child’s self-esteem and self-confidence, by challenging and encouraging them.

Each child’s goals should:

• benefit the child• be achievable• be developmentally appropriate• be observable and concrete

Include families and other educators on gathering information and working towards the goal

Children should be given input into their goals where possible

In your weekly program, for the purposes of assessment your learning opportunities and provisions should have objectives. These objectives will reflect your goals for the children – both individuals and the group.

Recording goalsHow do we keep track of the child’s progress in relation to the goal? It is quite different from keeping track of observations, because each provision you plan for


the child will be leading to the child meeting the goal. The provisions form incremental steps to the achievement of the goal.

The method you choose to use will vary depending on how you choose to monitor each child’s progress. You may choose to write the child’s goals at the front of their individual portfolio, and then add to these periodically as different skills and interests arise. You may choose to do a developmental summary and have an observation book/diary, writing the goal in the front of the book in a special section.

Each service will have their own method for recording goals and you will find they are generally easy to use and follow, it’s always best to keep the format simple. Remember the observation and planning formats we looked at earlier? These are also useful for recording children’s goals, provisions and evaluations.

What ever the method, you will need to include somewhere to write the actual goal and you need to allocate space for the evaluation of the goal and the progress towards achievement. Remember with goals there may be lots of observations and provisions that are steps towards achieving the goal.

You need to consider how, when and where to record evaluations of the individual child’s goals. Will you evaluate weekly to see how things are going? Will you use observations to assist in the evaluation of the goals and to add to your developmental summary once the child has achieved the goal? Will the goal be recorded separately and incidental recording made of the progress to achieving the goal? Think carefully about these areas and keep any formats clear and simple to use. Remember educators are time poor when it comes to keeping written records and documentation up to date.

Let’s move onto how we use this information gathered about the children for our planning.

Sources of informationWe are all aware that the main source of information about the child and their development is recorded observations. To ensure we have an accurate and valid view of each child’s development we need to keep a range of observations and information gathered over a period of time and in a variety of settings. We also need to gather information from a range of sources – not just our own observations.


Observing and recording

Activity 5


Use or establish opportunities to gather feedback and comments from all those involved

Involving the stakeholdersEvaluation not only should take place over time and varying circumstances but should draw information from a number of places as we all see different things in children. I have a real interest in cognitive, scientific and creative behaviours so I find these easy to work with and evaluate but have been guilty of missing other areas because my interest is so strong.

We need to have an unbiased and objective evaluation of children. Sometimes people can have a mindset about a particular child and are unable to objectively.

Think back to some of your experiences with children, there is usually one boisterous, active child who will get blamed for disrupting stories and not sitting still and be asked to sit still. But do we look to see why the child is jumping around? On occasions they will get the blame but not be the culprit, their friend was poking them. Or it could be the other way around – the child who can do no wrong who may ‘get away’ with inappropriate behaviour because they wouldn’t do that.

We are all human and our judgments and conclusions, no matter how hard we try can be a little subjective. That’s why it helps to have a number of views.

We need to gather information from other educators, service staff, families and children.

Who evaluates?Children, families and educators are all stakeholders in the service and should be consulted when evaluation takes place. This doesn’t mean they will be part of all and every situation that needs evaluation – that wouldn’t be possible, but they do need to be part of the process.

Long term Short term Incidental Immediate


educators

families

educators

families

children

educators

families

children

educators

children

So again we are back to our partnerships – our partnerships with the educators, children and the families we work with.

The program should be evaluated by all those involved in it with the educators providing the majority of information. Because we are not able to see everything that happens throughout the day, other educators are crucial to evaluation. They are able to share with you their interpretation of the day, whilst being aware of what you are trying to achieve. They are familiar with the routine and timetable and can sometimes foresee problems before they occur, and can help you smooth over problems before they happen.

Parents are able to provide feedback on what they see and what their children tell them. They will share with you their child’s experience and review your environment with their child in mind. They are able to give you another, different perspective.

Children are the immediate evaluators of the program. If provisions and environment stimulate their curiosity, are interesting to them and hold their attention for an extended period of time, you know the program is reflecting their interests and requirements. The way children respond provides an accurate account of the provisions and how the provisions were for them. Sometimes children will give you direct feedback by telling you how much they enjoyed or didn’t enjoy a provision.

When you are clear on who is involved in the evaluation process, you can consider how you will gather this information and where the evaluation will be recorded, that is, you will develop strategies for evaluation. Effective strategies will ensure your evaluation is more useful as your information is organised and accessible.

Strategies to gather feedbackWe have identified that evaluation information needs to come from the major stakeholders – educators, children and families. We now need to investigate some strategies to gather this information.


EducatorsFinding time to share information about each day can be very challenging for educators. When educators are on different shifts it can be difficult to find much time together. Different systems will work differently for groups of educators in different situations.

Some strategies that may be effective include:

• Providing educators with post-it notes. When the provision is completed they write a brief evaluation and stick it on the back of the program. The information can then be transferred to the evaluation at the end of the day.

• Educators are allocated provisions or learning areas to observe and be responsible for and are asked to fill in the evaluation of the program themselves during the day.

• Educators get together during rest time and discuss what had happened during the morning.

• Evaluation sheets for each learning area are placed in plastic sleeves attached to the wall at adult height. Educators complete ongoing, dated evaluations as the day unfolds or significant events occur.

• Educators will use some of the time in programming meetings to discuss evaluation of provisions, learning opportunities and children’s goals from notes recorded during the week.

Some of these strategies may work for you, or they may not. Each situation is unique and what works well for an educator in one service might not work for another service or another educator.

Here is a simple, one page monthly evaluation format that educators could use to record feedback and comments on the program. This form could then be used in planning meetings. Share it with your teacher and the group.

Month: Monthly Evaluation Format


Program, routines, children, environment (indoor / outdoor)

Area Feedback

Provisions, projects, investigations, ideas, follow-ups

Routines

Elements of the program that went well

Things to do differently

Outdoor environment

Indoor environment

Completed documentation

Families Collecting information from families is challenging as parents are very busy people. The strategies you could use would include both verbal and non-verbal methods. To get verbal feedback you will need to ask specific questions to parents until they get to know you. Such a question could be; Did Foonghar talk about any specific activity she played with when she got home yesterday? Once parents get to know you they will often tell you what their child talked about at home and give you other interesting bits of feedback.

When discussing the child’s day with parents you may also get feedback about past provisions or what the child is accomplishing at home. Take the time to listen carefully and parents will be able to provide you with valuable information.

Most non-verbal communication with parents will be written communication. To collect information about the program for evaluation you need to be sure to gather it on the day or the day after.

Some forms of written communication you could use are:

• a diary where educators/parents can leave messages for each other • a daily communication sheet• a comments/suggestion page next to the program or near the

arrival/departure sign on sheet


• a set space on the child’s observation sheet or communication booklet

• a space in the day book or journal for parents to add comments• a suggestion box within the room.

Again be as creative as you like when devising ways to gather information from families.

The key component is about gathering information from each group. Without this feedback, you will be evaluating alone and only getting one perspective of what’s happening. This will limit your opportunity to provide an innovative program because the ideas will only be coming from you. Other people offer a different perspective and a wealth of ideas.


Identify and apply appropriate criteria for evaluating the overall program

Appropriateness of evaluation We need to consider not only the appropriateness of the evaluation but also it’s authenticity. We could easily fill a whole day with making evaluations of children and recording them for future use. You need to ensure that the evaluations you record are appropriate for that child. A child who is not well may not cooperate very well during the day and it is inappropriate to make comments on this behaviour as it may not be the norm. All children feeling unwell can be uncooperative. Thorough evaluation requires us to keep a range of information over time in order to draw accurate and valid conclusions.

It’s also important to consider how authentic or even meaningful the evaluation is. In the past it was common for services to check the physical skills of children by getting them to line up and each in turn perform a number of tasks, e.g. hop on one foot, walk the balance beam. This is an artificial set up of evaluation and only tells us if they could do it at that time or not and only in that set of ‘testing’ circumstances. Making a big deal out of normal maturational skills in such a testing environment doesn’t hold much meaning. The majority of children learn to hop, balance, walk, jump without issue – they are physical maturation skills and will happen unless there is a significant developmental delay so why spend time evaluating them. This type of evaluation, while adding bulk to portfolios is meaningless. Let’s spend our time on other ways of evaluating how they use their physical skills to learn and grow.

I’ve also seen children being made to cut along lines, cut out shapes, trace over lines etc so that these can be added to their portfolios so families can see their performance and skills development. Once I noticed a child who was intently focused on accurately cutting out pictures of toys from a department store catalogue and then was pasting them onto a letter to Santa. He was made to stop this so he could cut along two stencils – one with straight lines and one with a large wavy line – to put into his portfolio.

Which of these cutting experiences tells us more about the child’s cutting skills? Yes the first – the child initiated one. It also tells us that he understands about


letters and even though hasn’t the skills to write with words is still able to communicate his wants.


Include children’s responses and comments as part of the evaluation process

Evaluation information will come from children verbally and through what you see. When questioned older children will be able to tell you what they think about provisions and you will be able to observe their responses to provisions and learning opportunities. For example, the children may ask you for additional equipment to play with; they may refuse an invitation to a provision; they may bypass a provision regularly; or let you know they really enjoyed a particular provision.

The wonderful thing about children’s feedback is that it is immediate. For instance, if you invite a child to join in an experience and you find they are unable to participate because it is too challenging, you could bring out another piece of equipment that could develop the same skills, but is more manageable for the child. This allows you the opportunity to make on-going changes throughout the day to enhance the program.

What you observe the children doing is automatically included in your evaluation. If you have planned for leaf-rubbing and no one participated, then you would include that in your evaluation, speculating why no-one engaged in the provision and what changes could be made to encourage the children to participate in the future.

Whilst it is great to get incidental evaluation and feedback from children as the day progresses, we need to be more active in seeking feedback. Children need to be included in the evaluation process and we need to plan for this to happen.

Activity 6


Ensure programs are evaluated regularly and in accordance with service guidelines

All evaluation of programs should be informed by the philosophy of the centre and policies and guidelines such as confidentiality and anti-bias should be observed.

To ensure uniformity of observations, it is preferable to use the ones developed by the centre staff and used by all staff members. That way there will be uniformity in the question s asked which will make it easier to collate and examine evaluation across all the children in the centre. It is also easier to update one set of questions than many different ones.


Use evaluation information towards further design of programs

Programs are of little use if they are not updated to keep up with the child’s developing interests and needs. So ensure that programs are evaluated regularly and in accordance with the centre’s guidelines.

Planning for the futureThis topic has been very focused on evaluation and like many things evaluation needs to be done at regular intervals. We’ve looked at the value of evaluation in helping to guide our actions in the future, and that we need to make time to reflect on various aspects of our program and planning.

By evaluating daily you are able to make changes and improvements for the following day. You can assess how your focus children are going by what happens in the day – how they respond in provisions and whether they are able to meet goals you have set for them or not. All this information gives you ideas for making changes from one day to the next, whilst meeting the children’s interests and needs.

But what about planning beyond the following day? What about planning for the next month?

You should use information from your daily evaluations to give you the ideas about how your week went. Was it a good week, a bad week, a fun week, a challenging week? By looking at the week as a whole, you tend to remove yourself from the day to day concerns and focus on a bigger picture. When doing this, look at things like:

• Does the program seem interesting to the children and their families? • How did educators many problems or issues throughout the week?• What was working well?• What wasn’t working that educators needed to talk about?• How were staff managing children’s behaviour?• How were the families this week? Any questions or queries?• Was there anything that needed to be addressed with other

rooms/groups?


• How were the children as a group?

If any issues came up using these questions, they can be addressed at the next programming meeting or when the opportunity arises.

As we develop our reflective skills, we should look at ways to change things and to make the environment and learning opportunities richer for children.

As the weeks progress and you gather a large amount of information, you will need to collate this. This information can also be used to inform the management committee or owners about what is happening within the program. Sometimes educators will be asked to put this information into a monthly report to management. This may provide you with the opportunity to reflect on big picture items such as new equipment purchases, changes to routines to assist children’s development and the flow of the program (introducing progressive snack times), the service programming approach and even how the program meshes with the service philosophy.

How we program will be largely dependent on how we evaluate it. Every time you develop a format and work within that framework, your evaluation will help you decide what you could do differently next time. Evaluation will form the basis for future planning.


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