We are required by Ofsted to gather evidence of ongoing assessment on your child.
We do this by using both informal and formal observations, assessments using the Early Years Foundation Stage’s (EYFS) Next Steps. The adult role is to use observed outcomes to show how your individual child is progressing through the weeks, months and years that they are in our care.
We observe your child at play – by listening to your child, by watching your child inside or outside during child-initiated or adult-led play by listening to things you as parents tell us about your child at home via the “Parent Just a Quick Note” pages in the front of your Daily Dairy and Communication Book. By finding out what your child’s current interests and developmental needs are via the “My Favourite Things” pages again in the front of your Daily Diary and Communication Book. By talking to a practitioner from another setting;
We assess (think carefully about) your child’s play or things your child has said. By doing this, we can think about how we can support your child’s learning and development in a new or different way;
We link your child’s observations to the EYFS development matters and read the document for ideas and more information;
We decide what your child’s next steps activities might be. We do this by considering what we know about your child’s likes and dislikes, learning styles, current schemas, interests at home, at Grafton and elsewhere;
We consider our role in your child’s next steps – do we need to buy anything new? Do we have appropriate resources? Have you any appropriate resources we could use? If your child likes reading, do we have appropriate books? How can we best support your child?
We observe the outcomes of our work with your child – has the objective been achieved? Have we supported your child to develop new skills?
We use this method of ongoing observation, assessment and planning alongside information about…
Your child’s likes and dislikes;
Your child’s home life;
Your child’s interests;
all of which should be shared regularly via the “Parent Just a Quick Note” pages and the “My Favourite Things” pages in the front of your Daily Diary and Communication Book.
Medical information about your child – for example, whether your child needs medication for eczema or requires extra resources or changes to the environment to accommodate his/her individual needs;
Additional needs information about the child – for example if your child has a learning disability or information taken from a CAF;
Your child’s abilities and current learning and development – for example whether your child is able to speak, hold books by himself, walks unaided etc. This type of information will determine the type of activities we provide.
All children are different and to reflect this age ranges have been overlapped in the EYFS to create broad developmental phases. This emphasis’s that each child’s progress is individual to them and that different children develop at different rates.
Children do not suddenly move from one phase to another, and they do not make progress in all areas at the same time. However, there are some important ‘steps‘ for each child to take along their own developmental pathway.
In addition to the regular entries made in children’s “Daily Diaries” we will record some of these developmental ‘steps’ in each section of your child’s own personal “Learning Journal” as a ‘snapshot’ of the progress made in each child’s learning and development over time.
The full meaning of the codes used can be found in your copy of “Areas of Learning and Development, A Condensed Guide for Parents”, which should be kept at home for quick reference when needed. In this guide you will see listed the 513 developmental matters, skills and processes or “steps” which we are required to record in young children from Birth to Five. Each of which we have given a code to help to make recording their observed outcomes and more formal “Observations” a little simpler for recording in our “Daily Diaries” and “Learning Journals”.
All of which we hope will help us to develop and evidence a unique record of the progress made in each child’s learning and development whilst in our care.
Below you will find a pdf version of our full “Learning Journal“, however we would not necessarily print the whole document out for your child but just the broad phases we are working on with your child, but we have uploaded the whole document here for you to look through at home at your leisure.
Created May 2013, Reviewed and Updated April 2018
We do this by using both informal and formal observations, assessments using the Early Years Foundation Stage’s (EYFS) Next Steps. The adult role is to use observed outcomes to show how your individual child is progressing through the weeks, months and years that they are in our care.
We observe your child at play – by listening to your child, by watching your child inside or outside during child-initiated or adult-led play by listening to things you as parents tell us about your child at home via the “Parent Just a Quick Note” pages in the front of your Daily Dairy and Communication Book. By finding out what your child’s current interests and developmental needs are via the “My Favourite Things” pages again in the front of your Daily Diary and Communication Book. By talking to a practitioner from another setting;
We assess (think carefully about) your child’s play or things your child has said. By doing this, we can think about how we can support your child’s learning and development in a new or different way;
We link your child’s observations to the EYFS development matters and read the document for ideas and more information;
We decide what your child’s next steps activities might be. We do this by considering what we know about your child’s likes and dislikes, learning styles, current schemas, interests at home, at Grafton and elsewhere;
We consider our role in your child’s next steps – do we need to buy anything new? Do we have appropriate resources? Have you any appropriate resources we could use? If your child likes reading, do we have appropriate books? How can we best support your child?
We observe the outcomes of our work with your child – has the objective been achieved? Have we supported your child to develop new skills?
We use this method of ongoing observation, assessment and planning alongside information about…
Your child’s likes and dislikes;
Your child’s home life;
Your child’s interests;
all of which should be shared regularly via the “Parent Just a Quick Note” pages and the “My Favourite Things” pages in the front of your Daily Diary and Communication Book.
Medical information about your child – for example, whether your child needs medication for eczema or requires extra resources or changes to the environment to accommodate his/her individual needs;
Additional needs information about the child – for example if your child has a learning disability or information taken from a CAF;
Your child’s abilities and current learning and development – for example whether your child is able to speak, hold books by himself, walks unaided etc. This type of information will determine the type of activities we provide.
All children are different and to reflect this age ranges have been overlapped in the EYFS to create broad developmental phases. This emphasis’s that each child’s progress is individual to them and that different children develop at different rates.
Children do not suddenly move from one phase to another, and they do not make progress in all areas at the same time. However, there are some important ‘steps‘ for each child to take along their own developmental pathway.
In addition to the regular entries made in children’s “Daily Diaries” we will record some of these developmental ‘steps’ in each section of your child’s own personal “Learning Journal” as a ‘snapshot’ of the progress made in each child’s learning and development over time.
The full meaning of the codes used can be found in your copy of “Areas of Learning and Development, A Condensed Guide for Parents”, which should be kept at home for quick reference when needed. In this guide you will see listed the 513 developmental matters, skills and processes or “steps” which we are required to record in young children from Birth to Five. Each of which we have given a code to help to make recording their observed outcomes and more formal “Observations” a little simpler for recording in our “Daily Diaries” and “Learning Journals”.
All of which we hope will help us to develop and evidence a unique record of the progress made in each child’s learning and development whilst in our care.
Below you will find a pdf version of our full “Learning Journal“, however we would not necessarily print the whole document out for your child but just the broad phases we are working on with your child, but we have uploaded the whole document here for you to look through at home at your leisure.
Created May 2013, Reviewed and Updated April 2018
| learning-journals-next-steps-observation-records-2013.pdf |