Barbara Comments on Embedding Assessment
in All Classroom Activities

Assessment is one of the hardest things for teachers, because children with special needs best display skills in their functional environments while they are actually involved in their play. So what do you do to demonstrate that a skill has been present with some consistency?

Sometimes I will focus on one student each week and observe them and chart some of their behaviors. Sometimes we'll get together as a staff and write down our impression and observations of a particular child.

I know one teacher who has a set of white labels on a clip board and quickly writes down observations of individual children on labels and later peels them off and puts them in that child's chart. I want to focus on this next year. There's so much going on all the time, it's just a matter of getting it down.

I do a yearly evaluation, using different tools like a Brigance or the Linder Functional Play-Based Assessment. That has some nice dialogue of some questions to ask children during their play. I've been thinking about portfolio assessment for children who are multiply involved. My students need something when they leave me to demonstrate what they have accomplished--that they've had access to the curriculum--a visual display of that. Videos would be great.

Barbara comments on other key elements

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