Observations of Play

During the past 8 weeks, I have focused a lot on observation.  Observation is one of THE greatest tools we have as educators.  It tells us way more than words, which with infants that are pre-verbal, that is very helpful!  It gives us a window into the minds of young children and enables us to see what they are learning.  Here is a series of photos I took in my own classroom.  The actual series was about 40 pictures long, but I chose a set of eight to allow you to see the interaction that I saw. 

This is Eli (left, 6 months) and Kellan (right, 8 months). 

They are engaging in a form of play known as rough and tumble play.  It is not violent.  It is not agressive.  It is merely a give and take exploration of each other.  It is instinctual for a teacher to see interactions like this and stop them.  I decided to step back, not interfere, and observe the interactions.  I was standing nearby while taking pictures, ready to step in if I needed to.  I was very please that I did not need to step in.  This type of play teaches children social awareness, cooperation, fairness and altruism.  Lack of experience with this pattern of play hinders the normal give and take necessary for social mastery, and has been linked to poor control of violent impulses in later life (National Institute for Play).  I observed this first hand through these two boys that demonstrated this social give and take.

I truly hope everyone got as much out of this course as I did.  I have always known the importance of good observational skills, but this course in child development truly reinforced this knowledge. 

Assessment in Education

Assessment is a necessity in education.  Without assessment, we cannot understand where our children are in the learning process in order to educate them appropriately.  Assessment is a set of checks and balances for student progress, teacher effectiveness, and overall classroom structure that allows for an optimum learning environment.  Assessment should be as customized as possible for each child because children all learn so differently.  Unfortunately, this is not the case.  Testing has become a game of not how smart a child is, or what they know, but of how well a teacher prepares his or her children for a test.  We are testing how well a child learns a certain way without heeding the MANY different learning styles of children. 

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, our public schools practice the Standards of Learning (SOL) system.  This is a system in which the state has standardized testing for grades 3-8 and some testing for the end of high school courses.  From the Virginia Department of Education website, I retrieved this statement: “The system [SOL testing] provides schools, school divisions and the Virginia Department of Education with critical data to inform the development and implementation of effective instructional strategies and best practices.”  Nowhere in this statement does the DOE mention the words child or learning.  I had a hard time finding these words anywhere on their website.

Ultimately, funding from the Commonwealth is dependant on how well schools perform on these tests.  Because of this, schools begin prepping their students from day one of public school life.  My co-teacher in my infant classroom used to teach 1^st grade in public schools and she because so disillusioned and fed up, that this testing was one of the greatest reasons she left that job. 

Here is what she had to say about these tests:

“In order to prepare the children for these tests, the county that I taught in created assessment tests in the content areas for each grade.  So while the third graders were taking their SOL tests, all of the other grades were taking Henrico County assessment tests.  The first grade tests were multiple choice tests in Social Studies, Science, Math, and Reading.  In the areas of Social Studies and Science all of the content taught and tested was based on and built upon the content of the third grade SOL test.  From the first few weeks of school I literally had to begin teaching my children this content and model to them how to take a multiple choice test.  5 and 6 year olds.  Children who do not yet have the ability to process the several step questions that they had to answer.  Children who did not understand double negative questions.  As an adult, even I have trouble understand double negative questions.  One of the questions my children had to answer was “Which one of these is NOT a natural resource?”  Here I was trying to teach them how to take a multiple choice test and eliminate the wrong answer and I had to somehow teach this twist as well.  It was a frustrating time for me and part of the reason I made the decision to move into Early Childhood Education and work with children in a less formal setting.”

Much of the world uses this same form of testing.  When researching testing in Korean society, I was amazed at the emphasis placed on test scores.  They use a test called the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) for college admissions.  Their society begins prepping children for this exam from age 4-5.  Their society revolves around this test so much that on the day of the test (the 2^nd Thursday in November) government offices and public firms change their hours to reduce traffic congestion, public transportation alters its schedule to provide better for test takers, and even motorists are prohibited from honking their horns near schools.  As a result of this pressure, suicide rates for teenagers and mothers of teenagers are much higher in November and December.  Testing in America is following these patterns a little too closely for my comfort. 

References:

www.doe.virginia.gov/testing

www.korea4expats.com/article-csat-korea.html

Cindy Larsen and her blog, clynnlars.wordpress.com