Quote from Cathy Nutbrown

"Pausing to listen to an airplane in the sky, stooping to watch a ladybug on a plant, sitting on a rock to watch the waves crash over the quayside - children have their own agendas and timescales. As they find out more about their world and their place in it, they work hard not to let adults hurry them. We need to hear their voices." ~Cathy Nutbrown I feel like this quote tells a lot about how children stop and recognize the little things in life. As adults we are always in a hurry and forget to realize and see the little things in life. This quote lets us know as teachers that we need to hear the children’s voices and listen to them. We can reach more children by listening to them.

Assessment of Children

When assessing young children we need to be aware of all the areas of development which is what “the whole child” is pertaining too. We need to understand how they socially engage and how they connect with their peers. We need to understand how each child learns and their strengths and weaknesses so we can focus our individualization on those points. Children grow and develop at different levels. We then assess based on each developmental domain; we understand them as a whole child. This should continue as the children become older and maybe even more so. I know that social and emotional development is a key component that children need to develop skills in to fully be prepared for elementary school. As children do become older it is very important to assess them in all areas not just academically. In the United States we seem to focus on assessing children based on academics (cognitive development). “In the United States, a series of federally sponsored tests called the National Assessment of Educational Progress measure achievement in reading, mathematics, and other subjects.” (Berger, 2009, p. 358) States can select their own assessment tests to use also. We want to know how much they know based on a test that is given to them. We do not as a society try to understand what a child knows we just want to focus on what they learned. “One problem with national standards, which is evident on every achievement test, is that states disagree about what they ‘feel children should know” and how they should learn it.” (Berger, 2009, p. 358) When we test with written exams then we can only understand the child based on their written or given answers. Some children do not test well on written exams, but if the test was orally given then the child might have done better. The way we test is truly based on how well the children are able to perform on the tests. If we focused on the whole child and how that particular child learns and how they take tests then we could accommodate the child and their ability to take tests. This would show a better understanding of who that child is and what areas of interest they have. What information they have understood and knowledge they have been able to build upon throughout the school years. Children in Africa have just started focusing on the education of their children and figuring out what the children know at what age. “Over the past decade, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda have adopted free primary education policies, invested substantial amounts of primary education, and as a result, enrollment rates have increased in all three countries.”(Worldbank, 2012) These countries have been sponsored by The World Bank in efforts to reform the education of these countries in East Africa. This reform is called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and it focuses on the children who attend school and if they are actually learning. Uwezo is an initiative that aims to improve competencies in literacy and numeracy among children aged 5-16 years in Kenya. Tanzania and Uganda “use an innovative approach to social change that is citizen-driven and accountable to the public.” (Worldbank, 2012) Uwezo “adapted the successful Assessment, Survey, Evaluation, Research (ASER) methodology from India and is implementing large scale, citizen-led, household-based assessments of actual levels of children’s literacy and numeracy.”(Worldbank, 2012) These tests are Standard 2 level designed with national curricula. The MDG goals and test results are widely publicized to create broad public awareness and debate to create social and political momentum and stimulate policy change. (Worldbank, 2012) Children in East Africa can benefit a great deal from these tests and assessments. The awareness and publicity is good for the public and for the political leaders. The more the parents collaborate and partner up with education stake holders led by civil society the more they can have policy changes. One of the goals of the program is to increase by 10 percentage points in literacy and numeracy in the three countries. I am not going to talk about what the test scores showed. I want to let you all know that the results were not good but the assessment and tests brought a great awareness to the families, communities, and political policy makers. The assessments were not just about academics either. They went into the community (villages), the household and in to the families. The observers learned that if the mothers of these children were educated then the children were more likely to do better in school and even to go to school. The public awareness for education reform was a big deal for the villages and for the policy makers for East Africa. This Millennium Development Goals brought awareness on how the education for children in this part of the world was. It showed how a village can help educate the children and ensure they all grow and develop in a manner that is sufficient for them to succeed. This assessment was based off of the whole child. They looked at what the village was like, their home life, their family, and if they were able to attend school. The assessment proved that environmental factors play a big part in the education of children in East Africa. References Worldbank, 2012. Creating a National Conversation through Large-Scale Learning Assessments. Retrieved from http://go.worldbank.org/9VWT5W44E0 Berger, K. S. (2009). The developing person through childhood (5th ed.). New York, NY:Worth Publishers