Obs. Assess. Policy
Article posted by School Administrator
Rationale
Practitioners making quality observations are at the heart of all teaching and learning in the Foundation Stage. Observing children throughout the day will enable practitioners to gather a wealth of information about each child. This information can be used in a variety of ways and is essential if we are to ensure that the learning experience of each child is of the highest quality.
Observations enable practitioners to:
- Celebrate each child’s achievements
- Share information with parents
- Plan for a child’s interests
- Plan the next steps in learning
- Develop and extend the learning of each child
· Ensure each child receives a broad and balanced curriculum
· Gather information over time about cohorts of children and use this to inform the School Improvement Plan
Guidelines
Key Workers
We operate a key worker system. Each practitioner is responsible for a group of 12/14 children. There is a mixture of full time, part time, morning and afternoon children in each group. The children stay with the same key worker throughout their time in nursery.
Prior to starting nursery every child is visited in the home environment by their key worker and another member of the team. Time is spent finding out about the child and we take a photograph. This becomes the first page of their ‘Record of Achievement’
Record of Achievement
The records consist of:
- A front sheet, with the name, dob and photograph of the child and name of the key worker.
- An initial ‘Assessment of child’s language acquisition’ sheet – this is filled in with the parents at the home visit.
- An observations tick sheet, covering the majority of the stepping stones. Practitioners tick each box when an observation is made. A different colour is used for each term.
- Observations of the child and examples of paintings, collages, mark making etc
- Parental contributions
- Completed What’s Next? sheets
- Individual Child’s Progress Profile
Key workers maintain the Records for their group. To ensure every record is of the highest quality non-contact time is allocated during the week for the records to be kept up to date.
Observations
All practitioners make observations of the children throughout the day.
Where possible observations include examples of direct speech. Observations may be written, typed or pictoral. All staff are confident users of digital cameras; children are also encouraged to take their own photographs of their work.
Children who are learning to use English as an additional language may have some observations in their mother tongue.
Observations are made in all areas of the nursery and may arise from watching children during self-initiated play or during an adult led activity.
Children targeted for a focused activity should always have an observation made.
Observations are dated, initialled and state the context/area of the nursery the observation was made.
They show the areas of learning the observation covers.
For some activities a generic observation will be made for groups of children to indicate an experience they have had.
Teachers leading group time sessions make a half-termly observation for each child in their group.
Assessment
It is the class teachers responsibility (in conjunction with the key worker) to keep formal records of the children for assessment purposes.
Individual Child’s Progress Profile
Each child has an individual Pupil Profile which is updated termly (6 children/week).
The class teacher uses the observations in the Record of Achievement to make a judgement as to which stepping stone an individual child is working in. The Stepping Stones are highlighted in a different colour for each term to show the overall progress the child has made. Teachers and teams meet together to moderate judgements and ensure children are on line to make expected progress in all areas of the curriculum.
The Profile is sent to the feeder school.
Group (Cohort) Profiles
At the end of the first half term of the child’s time in nursery the class teacher uses the observations in the Record of Achievement to complete the Individual Child’s Progress Profile. The information from this is then transferred to the Group Profile. Children are given a score to give an ‘on entry baseline’. An overall score is given at the end of the child’s time in nursery. This information is collated and analysed to look for trends e.g. differences in achievement within areas of learning and strands, differences in progress between the different groups within the nursery e.g. boys/girls, bilingual/monolingual, length of time in nursery, full/part time.
The information is then used to feed into the School Improvement Plan.
Expressive Language Assessments
Information about an individual child’s language development is collected on the home visit. During each term observations of the child using direct speech are made (at least 3/term). These observations are then used to make a judgement about where to place a child on the stepping stones for ‘Language for Communication’ and ‘Language for Thinking’. In October, February and May groups of children are placed on the ‘Language Progression’. These records are reviewed and monitored termly to ensure children are making the expected progress. An ‘Expressive Language Record’ is completed for each child at the beginning and end of Nursery and sent to the feeder school.
Community Languages
We value the different languages children bring to School.
Staff teams identify which children are using a community language as their main spoken language.
Where possible a bilingual member of staff who shares the language works alongside the children during an identified session. The purpose is to develop the child’s community language alongside English.
3 observations/session are made by the bilingual member of staff and these are discussed at the Child and Planning Meeting.
What’s Next?
It is the overall responsibility of the class teacher, to ensure every child has regular observations made and that these observations are used to plan activities and experiences for the child.
In addition, every Key Worker is allocated an hour and 15 minutes a week, taken either in the morning or afternoon, to observe children in their observation group. At the weekly planning meeting each Key Worker will indicate which child they will track for an ‘in depth’ observation. During this observation a What’s Next? sheet will be completed to be discussed at the following planning meeting. Alongside this the Class Teacher will complete the Individual Child’s Progress Profile and identify any gaps in the child’s observations. Discussion of these at the Child and Planning Meeting will enable the team to plan activities and experiences to follow interests and extend learning.
In effect this means that every child will have a detailed What’s Next? completed each term, which is added to their Record of Achievement.
Parents/Carers
We value the contribution made by the parent/carer to the Record of Achievement for their child. During the child’s first term in nursery we arrange an open day where we show the parent/carer their child’s Record and talk about the different ways they can contribute.
We ensure the Records are always available and encourage the parent/carer to take the Record home overnight.
We appreciate that not all parents will feel able to make written observations so we ensure that the Key Worker has regular opportunities to talk to parents/carers about their child.
Key Workers may take the Records home overnight but must ensure that they are available on a daily basis for parents/carers.
In the event of a long term absence arrangements must be made for the Records to be returned to the nursery and a back-up practitioner will maintain the Records until the Key Worker returns.
Monitoring
Monitoring plays in important part in maintaining the quality of the observations and the Records of Achievement.
These are examples of the way monitoring is undertaken:
- Regular monitoring of a sample of Records by the Headteacher
- Regular monitoring of the Records by the Class Teacher
- Joint audits by teams of practitioners with a particular focus
- Individual audit of a Key Worker’s group of children
- Feedback from parents
- Feedback from outside agencies e.g. School Improvement Officer, Advisory Teachers
Reviewed 23/9/05 | Agreed by Governors
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