Week 8: When I Think of Child Development

Quotes that have meaning:

While we try to teach our children all about life, Our children teach us what life is all about-Angela Schwindt
www.quotegarden.com

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.-Kay Redfield Jamison
www.quotegarden.com

"Children are our most valuable resource" -Herbert Hoover
www.compassion.com

Children need models more than they need critics.-Joseph Joubert
www.notable-quotes.com

All of these quotes reflect jsut how important children are to us and they show us that we must take care of them because they are the future. There are so many quotes available for us to read and ponder and it is sometimes hard to pick just one or two. I can't wait to read everyones quotes so maybe I will be able to find some new favorites. This class has been great and I have learned so much from my colleauges-I hope to see many of you in my next class.

Testing for Intelligence? Week 6

Blog Assignment Week 6:

Testing for Intelligence?

This week we are looking at children being assessed and or measured. For me I think that assessing a child can be done with the “whole child” in mind, but is not normally. Most assessments are focused on certain areas and then they have another assessment for whatever else is being looked at. Assessments can be a good thing for a child because we need to look at everything to see where the developmental issues might be. When assessing a child we look at many areas; social, cognitive, and physical and each of these areas has other areas within to look at and measure. In order to get a full picture of a child’s development and or abilities we need to assess them at some point. This is not to say we test them so much that they are afraid of testing or even failing, we need to make it more of a game for young children if possible so they will get the most out of the experience. When we only look at certain areas of a child-we are not getting the full picture so we will not really know the child. Every child is different and develops at a different pace, so we need to take this into account when doing any assessing.

The country I picked to look into is Japan-partly because I lived there for three years and I would love to go back at some point (maybe as a DOD employee). In Japan they have no real assessment criteria, until they are in secondary education and this is so they have a better picture for the high school years. Children are regularly assessed by their teachers in Japanese and mathematics by teacher made assessment forms or professional ready-made tests (http://www.inca.org.uk/japan). In order to continue into high school each child must be assessed or they cannot proceed. Children are passed onto the next grade by the teacher’s assessment and not by testing as we do in the United States.

http://www.inca.org.uk/japan-system-mainstream.html