Observing A Child's Development

Assessment is the process of observing, recording and documenting a child’s actions and behavior to measure a child’s development. Assessment is an essential part of teaching and educating, because it can provide a record of cognitive, physical/motor, and language development. Records of this documentation can help identify strengths and weaknesses of the child as well as a helpful tool for the families to see the development of their child. There are different types of methods to use for assessment. Observations, portfolios and standardized test are some of the methods I would incorporate in my teaching. An observation is simply observing what the child is doing and recording what you see. A portfolio is a folder filled with different recorded

The volumes of Piaget’s work provide an in-depth view of how children create knowledge.” (Mooney, 2013 Pg. 78) In other words, Piaget thought children learned best when they are actually doing the work themselves and creating an understanding of what is going on rather than be given instructions. Piaget also believed that children need every opportunity to do things for themselves. “For example, children might be interested in how things grow. If a teacher reads them a finely illustrated book on how things grow, this instruction will increase the children’s knowledge base. But if the children have the opportunity to actually plant a garden at school, the process of taking care of the plant will construct a knowledge of growing things.” (Mooney, 2013 Pg. 79) Piaget stressed the importance of play as an avenue for learning. In Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development, children aging from 2-7 are in the preoperational stage. “Children form ideas from their direct experiences in life. This is why telling children something is less effective than finding a way to help them think their own way through a problem.” (Mooney, 2013 Pg. 86) Gross-motor development, fine motor, language-communication development, social-emotional development is the 4 crucial stages for a child’s development. In a classroom is important to ensure opportunities for the children to grow individually in