Quotes about Early Childhood

"In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry of idleness, good or evil, by the habits to which you train your children. Teach them right habits then, and their future life is safe.” 
- Lydia Sigourney

 
 We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today."
- Stacia Tauscher


"Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.
- Dr. Hiam Ginnot


"Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand."
- Chinese proverb


"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
- Henry Adams

Testing for Intelligence

Assessments of school aged children in Australia

In Australia there is an early years assessment test that is used for the primary schools. The assessment was developed by the University of Western Australia and is used in the Australian school systems. The assessment  is called Performance Indicators in Primary Schools, also know as PIPS. PIPS assesses early reading, phonics, and numeracy skills of the students in their first year of school. The purpose of this assessment is to identify as early as possible, students who may need extra support or enrichment. PIPS assessment testing is stated to be different, by the Australian Capital Territory Education and Training Website (2012), from other assessments in that its focus is not solely on what the student knows and can answer correctly, but on how the student goes about determining the answer. The assessments are done on a one to one basis with the teacher twice a year; the first one is administered within the first two weeks of school and the last one occurs during the first two weeks of the fourth term of school.

References

www.det.act.gov.au/teaching_and_learning

www.education.uwa.edu.au/pips

The Whole Child

In focusing on the whole child it is helpful to have a measurment that is based on the individual child in place. A measurement tool that is not geared towards teaching them standardized outcomes but one that is specific to the child's individual development. My reasoning behind having a measurement for the whole child stems from my understanding of Lev Vygotsky work on the zone of proximal development, which indicates that through the zone of proximal development teachers can take a child from what they are close to learning, to finally accomplishing that which they were close to learning; this is not accomplished through standardized test that want children to all learn the same thing at the same time, yet a measurement that is specific to the individual child's development will allow the teacher to assist in determining what the child is in the process of developing and then help to scaffold that child. In considering what to include in this individual measurement two helpful measurements to include could be: how the child learns in terms of their creativeness, persistence or curiosity, and how the child is developing emotionally in terms of their development of confidence in themselves and their sense of identity.