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Week 2, 5 to 9 February 2018 - 1.3.1 Assessment and planning cycle

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Weekly Room Goal MONDAY TO FRIDAY 5 to 9 February 2018

With your team set a goal for the week based on the issues or problems you’re having in your room. Use the Room Leader’s Goal Setting template to guide you if you need help and use the GROW coaching process. Remember, you can carry goals over from last week if you need to.

Short, sharp, daily meetings work best to ensure everyone achieves your room goal. Best practice for room leaders is to ask questions at the meeting from the GROW method of coaching to ensure educators stay on track to meet your goals. GOAL - what you want to achieve? REALITY - what’s happening now? OPTIONS - what you could do? WAY FORWARD - what you’ll do? Write progress notes.

Is there a problem? Excuses may mean that educators don’t know what to do, so ask more questions from the GROW coaching process. GOAL - what you want to achieve? REALITY - what’s happening now? OPTIONS - what you could do? WAY FORWARD - what you’ll do? Write progress notes.

What have we done to achieve our goal? What is getting in the way? Are we still on track to complete our goal this week?

Did you achieve your goal? What worked well? What needs improving? Do we need to continue with this goal

next week?

1.3.2, 4.2.1, 7.2.1

What NQS elements have you assessed and improved upon through your room goal?



Room Leader and Educators MONDAY 5 February 2018

The EYLF and MTOP is nearly dead because very few people properly understand it. This especially includes

many assessors and training organisations. However, if we go back to the regulations and see exactly how the

EYLF/MTOP is connected to them, we will have a better understanding of assessment and planning.

1.3.1 Assessment and planning cycle

Each child’s learning and development is

assessed or evaluated as part of an ongoing

cycle of observation, analysing learning,

documentation, planning, implementation and

reflection.

There is a huge four part problem with Element

1.3.1 and early childhood. Firstly, educators don’t have much time to document. If you

had 36 children over the week, and 2 hours programming

time as per the Award, you would have just over 3 minutes

for each child’s documentation. Within that 3 minutes you

need to show how you assessed or evaluated as part of an

ongoing cycle of observation, how you analysed the learning,

documented, planned, implemented and reflected.

Secondly, not every educator working with children is

contributing to the documentation and planning cycle,

leaving it up to one person. The sub-section of this problem is

educators remove themselves from the children when

documenting and planning which creates a feeling of extra

work.

The third part of the problem is the lack of understanding of

the EYLF or MTOP. This usually comes from assessors, who

mainly think EYLF or MTOP is the same as programming from

20 years ago. Most training colleges have a total lack of

understanding, again pushing old ways into the EYLF and

MTOP. When this happens, we are left with confused

educators who do way too much irrelevant documentation

and plan cycles that fill spaces without properly analysing or

reflecting. They end up wasting valuable time. But the worst

part of this problem is educators create documentation that

parents have no idea about or don’t understand. Most

parents think, “why am I paying all this money to read about

what my child does when it looks like what they would do at

home. Where is the teaching in that? Looks like child minding

to me!”

Lastly, all of the above problems get compressed into digital

app programs because the app developers are using an old

programming style and NOT EYLF/MTOP.

Don’t panic. We are going to strip it all back and fix all these

problems to ensure you get exceeding. We’ll also do it all in

work hours with the children.

Let’s look at the solutions to the problems.

The new 2018 NQS Guide says the program cycle consists of

Observation, Analysis of Learning, Documentation, Planning,

Implementation and Reflection all while reflecting at each

stage. We can do this in short precise sentences and small

paragraphs with or without a photo. This is what we are

going to learn to do this week.

Use this week’s learning activities as a guide for the rest of

the year. Also use them with new educators and when you

have assessment and rating to prove you know what you are

doing when using a planning cycle.

The follow two pages will show you very clearly how the

regulations and EYLF/MTOP are linked and how they show

you exactly how to plan your program.



What do the regulations say about planning? MONDAY 5 February 2018

Before we look at element 1.3.1 we need to

understand what the Regulations say about

documentation and planning. For example,

Part 4.1 Educational program and practice.

Regulation 73 An educational program is to

contribute to the following outcomes for

each child —

(a) the child will have a strong sense of identity;

(b) the child will be connected with and

contribute to his or her world;

(c) the child will have a strong sense of

wellbeing;

(d) the child will be a confident and involved

learner;

(e) the child will be an effective communicator.

You will see the above are the five Learning Outcomes from the EYLF and MTOP. What is more interesting is the EYLF and MTOP show you exactly how to meet this regulation and element 1.3.1’s planning cycle. Look at the right-hand columns under the Learning Outcome where it says, “Educators promote this learning, for example, when they:”

Above copied from the EYLF book

When you write from the right-hand side, you are

showing how you are meeting regulation 73, but more

importantly you are showing your planning and how

you’re extending learning for Element 1.3.1.

Please take a detailed look at the right-hand side below

all the Learning Outcomes in EYLF/MTOP. There is

NO EQUIPMENT. There is YOU, the educator. This is

why the EYLF and MTOP is known as a relationship

curriculum. You need to build learning relationships

from the right-hand side of the EYLF/MTOP to plan

learning for children.

You always use the right hand

side of the learning outcomes in

the EYLF/MTOP to plan and

extend learning.



What do the regulations say about analysis? MONDAY 5 February 2018

Analysis is the first step in assessment. You are

analysing what you see and where you think the child is

in relation to the Learning Outcomes – that is

assessment. Look below, the regulation wants you to

document the assessment of the child. Again, you

analyse to get an assessment result. Your analysis is

against the Learning Outcomes.

Analysis is about looking at what you see with the child,

thinking about what you see and asking yourself in

relation to what you see, “what Learning Outcome am I

seeing with this child?” That is analysis. The end result is

you writing the learning outcome you think you are

seeing. When you write the outcomes met, you have

documented assessment for the child.

Let’s now look at the regulation

74 Documenting of child assessments or evaluations for delivery of educational program (1) The approved provider of the education and care service must ensure that, for the purposes of the educational program, the following are documented

For children preschool age or under services are

required to document:

1. assessments of children’s developmental

needs, interests, experiences and participation

in the program (Regulation 74)

2. assessments of a child’s progress against the

outcomes of the EYLF (Regulation 74)

Educators need to continually ask “What does the child

know, can do and understand in relation to the EYLF

Learning Outcomes?”

When you write from the left-hand side you are

meeting Regulation 74 and Element 1.3.1 section for

assessed or evaluated. This is the biggest

misunderstood concept of the EYLF and MTOP.

Above copied from the EYLF book

When you write from the left hand side you are

showing the analysis phase of the programming cycle.

Simple programming planning uses the left-hand side of

the EYLF/MTOP to discover what children know, can

and understand (analysis) and the right-hand side

shows how you as an educator planned and extended

what children know, can do and understand. Using the

EYLF and MTOP left hand and right-hand side to write

all your documentation shows your planning cycle.

Simple planning cycle above using left and right sections

of the learning outcomes.

What do children know, can do and

understand?

How can I extend upon what children know, can do and

understand?



Room Leader and Educators TUESDAY 6 February 2018

Exceeding theme 3: Practice is shaped by meaningful engagement with families and/or the community. The biggest influence on children's lives comes from their family and community. When we understand more about the child’s family we can build a stronger relationship with the child and ensure they feel supported and included. Use the list below to assist your team to know more about the children you care for and educate.

What we need to always remember with the EYLF and MTOP

is they are relationship-based curriculums and learning takes

place in these relationships with children and educators. The

learning doesn’t happen with the child by themselves. This is

an important point to remember with this element because it

says “Each child’s learning…” It does not mean each child is

viewed by themselves outside the learning relationships they

have with other children and educators.

The most important part to remember is the word observe in

the planning cycle. You will most likely observe the child

while you are with them doing something together. This is

the relationship learning in the EYLF and MTOP.

Never take the work observe to mean you step back and

watch, or observe when they the child is by themselves using

a piece of equipment. You observe while you are with the

child because your interactions are a crucial part of learning

and the observation.

When you write children’s learning documentation as a part

of a group experience you need to show exactly what each

child knows, can do and understands in relationship to the

outcomes.

Examples of bad practice and documentation

The children kept busy inside. We had the white

board out again with textas as the children really

enjoyed this yesterday. The children used their fine

motor skills and creativity to create lots of different

drawings! They would then ask us to wipe clean the

white board when they wanted to start fresh.

The above is broad and tells me nothing about individual

children or the planning cycle, and is therefore a waste of

time.

There are many different cycles of planning from small quick

on the spot, that don’t need to go further, to medium cycles

that could go for the day or a few days, to large cycles that

grow and grow in major projects. The next example is a small

quick on the spot planning cycle.

Examples of great practice and documentation

Documentation with complete planning cycle written into it

Planning cycle in action

Today Cody organised an activity with rocks and two PVC pipes for Archie and Carter to test a hypothesis. Cody asked the boys which rocks would slide down the pipes faster, large or small? Archie and Carter began investigating to see which rock would slide faster, but soon the boys struck a problem. The rocks became stuck. Cody asked the boys what we should. Archie grabbed the pipe and started shaking it while saying “we should shake it to see if they start sliding again.” Archie’s ideas worked. The rocks came loose and started sliding again. Cody spent time interacting with Archie and Carter conversing about whose rocks would slide faster down the pipe. Archie said his big rock would be faster “bigger is faster,” but Carter was sure his little rock would be faster saying “no Archie mine will be faster.” They let their rocks go but it was too close to call, so we decided they were both winners with the boys saying “yay we won” and high fiving each other.

Planning Assessment (Cody is testing their knowledge) Observation Reflection then Assessment (Cody is testing their knowledge) Analysis of Learning (Cody now knows what Archie knows) Implementation and Planning Assessment (Cody is testing their knowledge) Documentation

In the above you can see the learning cycle is never

smooth and never works in a smooth circle. What we can

see is how Cody is Observing while in a learning

relationship with the children. We see exactly what Cody

has done to plan. “Today Cody organised an activity with

rocks and two PVC …”, then we see Cody use questions

to teach further as the rocks were stuck and again to test

the boy’s knowledge “whose rocks would slide faster

down the pipe.”

When we use quotes from the children we show how we

have assessed each child individually even though it is a

group experience.

Go through your documentation and see

how well and clear the planning cycle is

written into it. Make changes if needed.



Room Leader and Educators WEDNESDAY 7 February 2018

Exceeding theme 3: Practice is shaped by meaningful engagement with families and/or the community. The biggest influence on children's lives comes from their family and community. Learning about coffee from the local shop started very complex discussions.

A small sample of a large planning cycle that has

grown and grown into major projects with very

complex thinking.

Documentation with complete planning cycle written into it

Planning cycle in action

Extending yesterday’s learning - Titanic Wed 10th Jan 2018 Coffee was still an interest for the children, so we decided to explore a little further the continents that grew coffee. While reading a book about continents Archie commented that South America “at the bottom has icebergs and icebergs sunk the Titanic.” This was a great interest to the children and Archie shared his knowledge of the Titanic. “The people were on the boat for five days,” shared Archie. Miss Danielle and Miss Tara furthered the children’s thoughts while conversing with them and role playing using chairs as life boats to see who the children thought should be rescued from the boat first e.g. women or men, babies or adults, rich or poor, captain and crew or passengers. Miss Danielle provided children with examples of many ways identities and culture are recognised and expressed within the story of the Titanic e.g. the people that were thought to be important were saved first while others were left behind as they did not have enough life boats for everyone. Chloe St expressed her concern for children and babies that did not make it onto a life boat when explaining “I think that they should of let the babies on first before the parents because they can’t swim so they will sink!” (L/O 1.3) The children spoke to Miss Tara about fairness and equality and whether they would have used the same method as the crew on the Titanic while choosing who got to board a life boat first. “I would put all the boys on the boats first and make the girls swim and hold their

Planning Observation Assessment Analysis of Learning then Assessment (Using quotes shows what Archie knows) Reflection Planning (on the spot) Implementation (on the spot) Reflection Planning (on the spot) Implementation (on the spot) Analysis of Learning then Assessment (Using quotes shows what Chloe knows) Implementation Analysis of Learning then Assessment (Using quotes shows what

babies” shared Jasmine. After this discussion, Chloe Sm asked “but why couldn’t they just fix the boat and smash the ice out of the way?” Miss Danielle used this question as an opportunity to discuss the density of an iceberg. Miss Danielle explained to the children that 90% of the iceberg was below the surface of the water. “The iceberg wanted to be under the water, it didn’t want to swim away from the boat” Lila confidently expressed. “But I think that when I put ice cubes in my drink they just stay on the top, they don’t sink to the bottom” Mackenzie stated. (L/O 1.2) Extending on the ice density topic and Mackenzie’s statement about ice floating/sinking, Miss Tara and the children gathered containers and filled them with water so we can see whether the size of an ice cube is what determines whether it floats or sinks. “I think the little ones will sink and the big ones will float” Alice hypothesised. (L/O 5.3)

Jasmine knows) Observing (with the children while talking to them) Reflection Planning (on the spot) Implementation (on the spot) Analysis of Learning then Assessment (Using quotes shows what Lila and Mackenzie know) Planning (on the spot) Implementation (on the spot) Analysis of Learning then Assessment

The EYLF says “Learning is not always predictable and linear”

and this is clearly seen in the learning story above. Who

would have thought exploring coffee growing areas of the

world would end up as a learning experience discussing who

should live and who should die.

The other area I want to point out is the Reflection section of

a planning cycle. Educators are reflecting on the spot and at

high speed all the time. This is clear for example in, “who the

children thought should be rescued from the boat first e.g.

women or men, babies or adults, rich or poor, captain and

crew or passengers.” You can’t get to this kind of high level

teaching without reflection. The documentation shows the

level of complex reflection and ideas.

You as an educator need to be proud of what you can do on

the spot and confident to show the assessor.



Room Leader and Educators THURSDAY 8 February 2018

Exceeding theme 1: Practice is embedded in service operations

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I’ve shown examples of on the spot

planning cycles and how the planning cycle is constantly going

back and forward due to the actions and responses of the

children. Today I want us to think about all the things you have

changed in your routines.

Before we start we need to have a proper definition of

curriculum / program. The EYLF says “Curriculum encompasses

all the interactions, experiences, routines and events, planned

and unplanned, that occur in an environment designed to foster

children’s learning and development.”

Below is a point from the new 2018 NQS Guide under exceeding

theme 1, embedded practice. Educators:

consistently draw on their insights to make changes to

the design and implementation of the program.

I see educators meeting this exceeding point all the time, but

they don’t think about what they are doing as an exceeding

practice and they would have written very little about it in a

reflection. One of the reasons is because of the lack of

understanding of what a curriculum is. Think about your

routines, especially early in the year.

For example, Tamara the room leader is working on self help

skills with her children and needed to make changes to the

utensils so the children can successfully serve themselves.

Without writing endless amounts of ‘blah blah’ I want you to

write all the little things you have changed in your routine /

curriculum because you are ‘consistently drawing on your

insights to make changes to the design and implementation of

the curriculum/program.’

Room Leader and Educators

FRIDAY 9 February 2018

On Thursday I showed you how Tara and Danielle are reflecting on

the spot with children and showing this in their documentation.

Write how your team reflects on the spot to change the direction of

planning and the way learning is implemented. This might be

difficult to start with because you are just doing it, but think about

what you are doing so you become very confident to talk to

assessors about your planning cycle.

Below is a point from the new 2018 NQS Guide under exceeding

theme 1, embedded practice. Educators consistently engage

meaningfully with children’s families to inform them about the

educational program. How do you do this well?

How could you improve if you need to?



Critical Reflection - Groups of Children MONDAY TO FRIDAY 5 to 9 February 2018

Exceeding theme 2: Practice is informed by critical reflection

Thinking of 1.3.1 Assessment and planning cycle

Each child’s learning and development is assessed or evaluated as

part of an ongoing cycle of observation, analysing learning,

documentation, planning, implementation and reflection. How has

your understanding of the way we critically reflect changed your

practices with the children in your class or in small groups?

Step 1. What have your critical reflections revealed in relation to

Element 1.3.1 Assessment and planning cycle?

Step 2. Have a discussion with your team and identify what you have

seen through a child’s perspective and how you changed a practice

because of it. In dot point form, list the things that you have

changed or implemented as a result of this week's learning activities

and reflective processes. Remember to use these dot points to tell

and show the assessor how critical reflection has changed your

practice.

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