Observations

When you monitor children’s work with ICT it is important that you:

• Consider at all times what you expect the children to be doing, whether it is sitting quietly, listening to you, talking quietly in groups or typing data; • Develop an expectation of how quickly each child should complete any task; • Develop a continual awareness of class activity, supplemented by systematic rotation around the class, checking on each child’s progress in detail.

By doing this, you should be able to intervene where desirable and you need to consider in your planning the following:

1. What do you expect children to be doing at each stage? 2. How can you judge whether they are progressing as expected? 3. How will you recognise when children need prompting or explanations? (Kennewell, 2004, p. 146)

Observations

Together with monitoring, observations can aide in the assessment of student ICT capability in early childhood education. In fact, it is considered the best way for you to assess a child’s ICT capability. Therefore, each time you implement this strategy you should aim to embody its role in the educational programme by ensuring it improves the quality, care and education that children receive. It should help you to “understand and reflect on the overarching and finer details of the educational programme” and “inform your understanding of the children in your care” (Percival, 2010, pp. 116-117).

There are a number of different types of observations which you should be aware of and include:

• Catch as you can; • Photographs; • Adult focused or participant observations; • Parent and carer observations.

• Record using post-it notes then transfer it to the students’ personal records of achievement; • Can be collected at incidental times of any day when you notice a child displaying an aspect of skill or learning; • Important to remember to include the child’s name and the date the observation was made.

Photographs

• Great evidence of their achievement and skills; • Offer accurate evidence of learning which needs to be dated and annotated linking to the areas of learning and development in EYFS, to show the specific learning achieved.

Adult focused or participant observations

• Record on a specific paper format which defines the activity and learning objectives; • Should record the child’s ability to meet the success criteria and in some cases take the learning to the next level; • Observations recorded during the adult-led learning experiences or where the adult is playing alongside the children in child-initiated play; • Essential that the key details such as name, date, any specific learning needs, how learning was demonstrated, and suggested next step for learning is included.

Parent or carer observations

• Often shared through direct conversation with teachers – either informally or at organised parent interviews; • Involves many simple recorded formats which parents can contribute to about their involvement in their child’s learning experiences; • A good example of parent involvement is using the ‘WOW Wall’ as a focused display where parents are invited to record aspects of their child’s achievements and make contributions to the display. (Percival, 2010)

The best way to measure the achievement of children in ICT capability is through your own personal observation. This can be coupled with wellthought out questions and listening and talking. Any assessment of ICT capability needs to be seen in this context.

When assessing it is not necessary to assess discrete skills as this will show through observation of whole tasks. For example, if they can use a paint program then you know that they can use a mouse well enough. As children interact with their peers, they will be able to demonstrate their ICT capability. You can make brief notes along with your observations to help you build a firm picture of their capabilities in ICT.

Just a reminder: There is more to ICT capability than just being able to use ICT skills and techniques. It is about having a growing awareness of their technological surroundings and that they know that ICT is a tool that they can use for their own purposes.

Questions to help with your observations on ICT Capability

1. Are they interested and curious about technology? Do they enter into discussion and make comments? YES / NO

2. Do they experiment with ICT applications, finding things out for themselves?

YES / NO

3. Do they show enjoyment and concentration? YES / NO

4. Are they able to use ICT for their own purposes? YES / NO

5. Do they incorporate ICT into their role play and demonstrate an understanding of its purpose? YES / NO