Your Most Sensible Guess
In the Early Years Development Matters, estimating comes under Mathematics, Number 40 – 60 months, with the target: Estimates how many objects they can see and checks by counting them.
It would be easy to whack out a worksheet to tick this target off, but it’s important to avoid worksheets at all costs in the Early Years.
To that end, I have created estimating question cards!
Using the New Curriculum
As you must be well aware, assessment in the Early Years is a challenge now that they have change the curriculum. At a recent course run by our LEA, we met with other practitioners and it seems that everyone is doing something different, but basically the same.
There are many types of observations that is common in every setting:
It’s not until you look specifically at the assessment sheets that you see the differences.
The priority for every setting is showing progress.
The 2012-13 Curriculum
Showing progress in the Early Years has always been difficult. The previous system of using profile points allowed practitioners to show numerical progress for all children from Nursery to end of Reception.
Many children would start in Reception at level 2 or 3, and would progress through the levels until they finished Reception.
Unfortunately, there is no current numerical method for showing progress nationally.
For our own records, in our Reception class we are trying to make sure we keep meticulous records of phonics, literacy and mathematics. I thought I would share some of my assessment sheets to help out other practitioners.
 | Writing Assessment Record Sheet We have split up the basic statements for the writing targets from 30-50 months all the way to a 2c on curriculum targets. We looked at the main process the children go through to be able to write independently and put it into a table that we can use to help us guide our planning and to track pupil progress. |
 | Phonics Assessment Record Sheet This sheet is one in which you can input the children’s total scores for the term. So, if they know 12/20 phase 2 phonemes and so on, and tracks the progress they have made from the previous term. Obviously leave the progress columns empty if those areas haven’t been tested yet. |
 | Reading Assessment Record As the children begin to use their phonemes to decode words for reading and also begin to recognise more words, this assessment sheet allows the user to track progress through terms and also see where the children are currently. |
 | Number Writing and Reading Assessment Record I do like to keep specific records to help with my planning. I find it’s easy to waste time teaching children things they already know. This sheet allows me to target specific children with specific number recognition which I can jot down in my planning. It doesn’t actually take that long, either. |
 | Catch as You Can Observation Sheets These sheets could be completed by your Learning Through Play Manager, as they are working with children. However, we don’t want to be filling in sheets when we should be moving children’s learning on so I recommend targetting specific children, perhaps children who need more help or children who are gifted and talented to use these sheets as effectively as possible. |
 | Magic Moments We keep Learning Journey scrap books at our setting, where maths, literacy and topic work, photographs and magic moments are collected and displayed to show children’s progress through the year. The magic moments cards capture special moments the children share with you. For example, today I was invited to a space party so I asked the child what happened at a space party and wrote down what he said on the magic moment card. This will later be stuck into his Learning Journey The magic moments cards are fantastic ways of capturing sweet things the children say and making notes about their progress through snapshots. |
If you have any ideas on assessment in the Early Years, please share!
A Bit of Everything
We use Learning Journeys in our Reception. Instead of using maths and literacy books, we collect key pieces of work to appear in scrap books to show how the children’s learning has progressed over time.
The Space Journal is going to be the feature piece of work in the Learning Journey for this term.
 | The title page It’s important for children to individualise their work. This black and white page is emblazoned with the title however the space badge in the middle is available for children to stamp their own mark. |
 | Astronaut Passport This page explores the development of how children have improved on writing their names since the beginning of term and |
 | Non-Fiction Page In this page we can talk about facts to do with space, for example that there is air and gravity in space just not a lot of it. Children are invited to draw a picture of waht they intend to write about, and then write a sentence about that picture. Lower attainers could state, quite rightly, that Mars is red. Higher attainers could write about gravity or the order of the planets. |
 | Phonics Page This page encourages children to explore phonics. Obviously, aliens do not speak English. Children on this page are encouaged to make up words using the phonic sounds they know, and of course draw a picture of an alien in the middle box. Drawing topic based pictures encourages children to use topic based creativity, develops fine motor skills and drawing skills. |
 | Labelling and Creative Design A mixture between fiction and non-fiction, children are able to create their own space ship design. However, as they need to label their diagram, their images need to have a lot of thought put into them. This encourages thinking skills as well as fine motor and letter formation skills. |
 | Maths The alien friend that we are doing in school will be made out of clay, but you could use salt dough or modelling clay. We have free flow/creative time in the afternoons (as the little ones are so tired and losing concentration by the afternoon, especially after a big lunch) and our aliens will be made the previous week in our afternoon sessions. We will then use the morning maths lessons to measure, weigh and thoroughly assess our aliens. Their vital statistics will then be input into this sheet along with a small photo of their friend. |
If you would like to use the the space journal, you are more than welcome to download the file, for free.
The Space Journal is intended to be done across the entire half term, one page a week. The children will be taking part in other activities and will produce other pieces of appropriate work and written work, however this would be their special topic work to appear in their Learning Journeys.
