Teaching Tots- Documentation and Grading

Last week we talked about setting up weekly plans, and we started a planning/ documentation binder (get your free planning pages here).  

This week we are going to go over how to grade your children and what you need to keep for documentation.  We will also be covering what your children need to accomplish over the year on the macro scale.  

Next week we will begin going over how to teach these different concepts.

Documentation

It is important to create a portfolio of work over the course of the school year.  Each school-aged child should have such a portfolio so that school administrators or other interested parties can see your child’s progress.  It also ensures your child will get credit for their work and continue to progress to the next grade if you choose to return to the public school system.

The planning pages from last week build the foundation of your child’s portfolio.  The weekly lesson plans combined with the notes you keep on their progress combined with the occasional sample of their work make for a perfect, no-fuss portfolio.  You can take pictures to document the work or you can have them do the work on paper and just clip that right behind the lesson plan each week.  

Additionally, if they do work in a notebook or on an app, keep the notebook and print out the app’s stats to add to the portfolio.

You do not need to keep every bit of work or practice, just enough to show growth.  Maybe you document their first attempt at an assignment, a 3rd or 4th attempt, and then the final time they do that assignment to show mastery.  Unless they make a lot of progress in a single week, there is really no point in keeping more than one example of work per domain each week.  One is more than enough to show progress.

Grading

You have to grade your children, but you do not have to use the public school’s grading system.  In fact, for this age group, I recommend a different grading scale altogether.

Like the public school system, you should give your children a report card every quarter.  Giving quarterly grades helps you make sure you are staying on track with their learning.  If you are behind or ahead, the report card will tell you.  And keeping these grades, along with the other documentation, may help you notice any learning disabilities that might be there.  

I recommend recording the grades directly on the annual overview.  By recording them there, you can see what is next to be learned and you can very easily track progress.  Furthermore, doing it this way grades individual skills instead of the child overall.

Because you are grading skills instead of a child’s overall performance in a domain/ class, I recommend using the following grades: fluent/ master, emerging, struggling, N/A.

What do these grades mean?  

A grade of fluent or master indicates the child has fully mastered that skill.  If you ask them a question pertaining to it, they will answer correctly without thought, kinda like you don’t have to really think to sing the ABC’s.

Emerging means they are beginning to get the skill.  Maybe they do it correctly 50% of the time, but they don’t get overly frustrated with it and are beginning to be proud of their work.  An example of an emerging skill would be a child who sings the ABC’s but still pronounces the L-M-N-O-P part as elemeno-p.  They may occasionally skip letters too, but it’s not going to stop them from belting out the alphabet song at every occasion.

Struggling is reserved for tasks that are very difficult.  The child gets frustrated trying to complete the task and seems to be making no progress.  A child struggling in a domain may mean you need to try a different tact.  Don’t think of struggling as a bad grade.  We all struggle with a new skill initially.  It becomes a point of concern if the same skill gets a struggling grade on multiple report cards.  Then you may have to troubleshoot a problem.

Finally, there is N/A.  Use this for all skills you have not even really touched on or attempted to teach. 

Your first report card of the year should be mostly N/As, the middle report cards should be mostly emerging/ struggling, and the last report card should be mostly master/ fluent.

How do I know my child mastered the content?

At this level, everything your child is learning is foundational.  They will use each skill they learn every day for the rest of their life.  So it is important to make sure your child actually masters the content.

But how do you know they mastered it?  Do you give them some kind of exam?  Is there a concrete way?

One of the ways to tell mastery is that the skill has made its way into long term memory.  The best way to check that is to not directly work on it for a week and then give them a confirmation assignment.  For example, if you are working on addition and you think they have mastered it, you could work on subtraction for a week, and then give them an addition task.  If they find the additional task easy after a week, then they have fully mastered it.

It is important to keep mastered skills sharp, so you shouldn’t just mark something as mastered and then never work on it again.  That is a sure fire way for the child to forget the skill.  Keep mastered skills sharp by feathering them into other new skills or by doing favorite activities pertaining to that skill.  You could also do drills or make games out of older skills.

Annual Learning Goals

These annual learning goals are an overview of what your child should learn before they are ready for the next grade.  

In general, you should be mostly done with the preschool goals before the age of 5.  You should be finishing up the kindergarten goals around the age of 6, and you should finish up the first grade goals around the age of 7.

Of course, these ages are rough guidelines, and are often affected by when your child’s birthday is relative to the start of the school year.  But these general guidelines are great to know if you are mostly on track.

Get your downloadable here.  Remember, this is for your reference more than it is for the kids.  If you want to print out a copy for your child and let them put stickers on what they have mastered, you can.  But it is designed to help you keep track in an easy way.

Learning Styles

Children of this age learn with their whole bodies.  Anywhere you can incorporate movement, you should.  Try to incorporate manipulatives as often as you can.  Being able to touch what they are learning increases comprehension and makes learning much more fun.

Songs, dance, demonstrations, and fun activities also help solidify knowledge and skills.  In the beginning you should try all kinds of ways to convey information.  Then observe your child and see how they learn best.  Once you know that, you can tailor your activities to match their learning style. 

Next week we’ll start getting into content.  What are you most nervous about teaching?  Let me know in the comments below.

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