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

Monitor and evaluate programs

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 programs 31

Planning for the future 31

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

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

All 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 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 cycle

Let’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 evaluation

There 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.