Quote

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
Plato

http://www.heartquotes.net/Education.html

Upon our children - how they are taught - rests the fate - or fortune - of tomorrow's world.

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning....They have to play with
what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they
learn in new forms of play.

--Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

http://quotations.about.com/cs/inspirationquotes/a/Teacher26.htm

I would like to thank everyone for thier comments and discussions this term. I have learned a lot from each and everyone of you. I found this term a little complicated because my daughter had her first child and manipulating that and being sick has sent me through trials. I am greatful to God for giving me the resilience to make this term work and for everyones support. A special thanks to Professor Jan Ferrari for being patient and understanding. I have enjoyed you as my professor this term.

What should be assessed in Children and Why?

The only thing I believe is that children should be assessed on what they have learned such as cognitive, bio-social, and psychosocial skills,to prepare the educators to teach them the next steps. I totally disagree on assessing a child as a pass or failure and to be placed in among other children in a region or country. Children are individuals and their processing is different from each other. If an assessment must be done for a pass or fail then it should be done in a variety of ways such as for the visual learner, kinetics learner, the auditory learner. That way it would not be the test that causes failure but the actual knowledge of the material. I am one person that does not test well. I am a person that is a kinetics learner and I need all tools to help me define what I have learned. I need the auditory, visual aide and to be able to feel it in order to learn the entire concept of the material.


Africa Assessments

I chose to study children in Africa and to see what assessment tools are used, if any. I found out that they use tow different tools of assessment one is the Western developmental screening tool and the other is The Malawi Developmental Assessment tool (MDAT). (Goodbody, 2010 August) The Western Development Tool is most comely used to determine the developmental milestones of children but they found out it was not reliable for children that live in rural Africa because some of the tools that are used in the testing the children are not familiar with, therefore they developed a screening tool for children that are from rural Africa. This assessment was used to identify children that are known to have malnutrition or neuro-disabilities and if the test showed normal then the children were not known to have any of these characteristics. Researchers still feel that the tool has obstacles to improving the development of children in low- to middle income countries because it is not as accurate as it could be but for now this is the most popular assessment and it is being shared as aid to other cultures. (Goodbody, 2010 August)

Resource:

Goodbody, Ailbhe (2010, August). Refining the milestones: assessing child development in Africa. Wellcome Trust.

http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/refining-the-milestones-assessing-child-development-in-africa/

My Opinion

I would like to share that assessments should be considered as an ongoing assessment and not a onetime test. In my opinion it takes a process to determine ones level of learning and not a day to discover that they are delayed or normal. In my years of teaching I love the tools of on-going assessment because it tells us as educators the development of each child in stages and helps us determine what is needed to bring a child to the developmental stage and if we find it difficult or there may be some concerns we refer our children to others to make a determination if it is a delay or not. Then we are provided with the trainings to help teach that individual child.