How to Write Quality Observations in the Early Years

Some of the questions that we often get on our webinars we run the role of observation in the early years and using observations for planning are:

·         What makes a high-quality observation?

·         Do we have to do a written observation?

·         How many observations should we do in a week or a term?

So, below we intend on discussing these questions in a little bit more depth, from my perspective as a previous manager in the early years. What was I looking for quality wise in observations? So, what does make a high-quality observation, what are we looking for? Let’s look at two examples, of observations written for the same activity and of the same child.

Observation One:

George enjoyed playing in the sand today. He played with his friends and made sandcastles. He counted stones as he put them into the sandcastle.

Assessments: Characteristics of Effective Learning – Shows particular interests, maintains attention and focus on an activity of their choosing. Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Making Relationships – 30-50 months: keeps play going by responding to what others are saying and doing. Mathematics: 30-50 months: Uses some number names accurately in play. Recites numbers in order to 10.

Observation Two:

George was playing in the sand today, alongside a group of 4 other children. George filled the bucket up with dry sand and T helped him. They took it in turns as they were filling the bucket. Once the bucket was full George turned over the bucket and tapped the bottom of the bucket. As he pulled the bucket of all the bucket up the sand spread out into a little pile. R turned to them and said, “You need wet sand!” George replied, “oh, okay I will get water!” George climbs down the steps to the sand pit, using alternate feet, while holding onto the fence with one hand and the bucket in the other hand. He runs over to the water butt in and out of objects and other children negotiating space. He twists the tap on using his left hand, filling his bucket up. He tries to twist the tap of but is struggling. He turns to the adult and asks, “Can you help me please?” The adult responds and turns the tap off. George smiles and says, “thank you!” before picking up the bucket by the handle with both hands and walking carefully around other children and objects with his bucket of water.

He tips the bucket over the edge of the sand pit, pouring the water in. And says, “Here you go!” Before, again holding onto the fence with one hand as he climbs back up the steps into the sand pit using alternate feet. George, T and R begin to fill up the bucket again. And George asks, “do you think this will work?” R replied, “yes, I do it with my daddy”. And T says, “you have to squash it down!” George says, “Okay, I will push it down!” and pats the sand down in the bucket with his hands between spades full of sand. Carefully, George and T tip over the bucket together. All three children then tap on the back of the bucket before R carefully lifts it off. George smiles as he looks at the sandcastle and says, “Wow! Great!” He then picks up the bucket and walks around the sandpit, reciting numbers as he puts stones into the bucket. All 3 children then begin to decorate the sandcastle with the stones George has collected. He pushes 3 big stones in the top and says, “Look I have 3 big stones!” R says, “We could stick a twig in as a flag” and George replies “Okay.”

Assessments: Characteristics of Effective Learning – Shows particular interests, maintains attention and focus on an activity of their choosing. Personal, Social and Emotional Development: Making Relationships – 30-50 months: keeps play going by responding to what others are saying and doing. Mathematics: 30-50 months: Uses some number names accurately in play. Recites numbers in order to 10.

Responsive planning: I joined in with George, R and T and we made more sandcastles. I modelled counting small sets of stones as we built sandcastles. And encouraged George to physically move a stone as he counted that one.

Planning ahead: Collecting more items such as shells, glass pebbles, fir cones and wooden numbers for the sand pit to continue to extend this play.

Setting up a loose parts tray inside with tweezers, small items and numbered sandcastle cards to practise counting small sets of objects.

High quality observations are objective, that describe the facts that are seen, free from subjective viewpoints and opinions or prior knowledge, focusing on everything within that moment. For example, observation one is subjective, we are making that assumption from knowledge we hold about the world that George is enjoying playing in the sandpit. However, observation 2 shows how the child is playing in the sand and is more objective, based on the facts and details that we can see in front of us.  Observation 2 is an observation that is off higher quality.

High quality observations are relevant and useful, they provide a level of information that give us knowledge of children’s learning, development and interests, but also their stage of development. We are often asked the question of how many observations should you do a week or a term? And my response is a simple one, you should only do observations if they are relevant and useful. There is no thick and fast rule about how many; don’t get me wrong I have worked for companies over the years who have set that base amount one per child per week, or two per child per week. But over the years as a manager I learnt that there is not a universal amount, it is not about how much is in a child’s learning journey, but rather how do we use those observations to inform our practise, our interactions, environment, activities and next steps.

Some practitioners will need to go through the written process more to feel confident about assessing children’s learning and development and having that time to think about how they are going to extend a child’s learning. Whereas other practitioners need very little written record but could speak confidently to you about where a child is developmentally, their skills and how they are supporting their learning and meeting their individual needs. I think it is important to remember that all practitioners are individuals and are at different stages in our training, learning and career and we have to do what we feel is comfortable for individuals, rather than apply a universal rule. This is because when we apply a universal rule, we apply unnecessary pressure and quite often take away the relevant and useful aspect of the observations in the demand to meet a certain quota of observations.

Another important factor of high-quality observations is that they have assessments for learning. Deborah Bullock states the following defining assessment for learning,

“Students are encouraged to take an active role, become self-regulated learners and leave school able and confident to continue learning throughout their lives. Assessment for learning is also referred to as formative assessment, i.e. the process of collecting and interpreting evidence for use by teachers and learners to decide where they are in their learning, where they need to go, and how best to get there (Assessment Reform Group, 2002). It is a process by which assessment information is used by teachers to adjust their teaching strategies and by students to adjust their learning strategies. AfL encourages learning and promotes motivation by emphasising progress and achievement rather than failure.”

Therefore, we are looking for observations that are positive and show progress and achievement in children. That show are interpretations that show where a child needs to go in their learning and development and show how the teacher or practitioner is going to plan for them to extend their learning and development responsively or by planning ahead that are going to help children get to that next goal or step.

Finally, when looking for high quality observations, they have consistent accurate assessments of learning. One of the traps that from my experience early years practitioners fall into especially with online learning journeys, is using the development matters as a tick box exercise and not thinking about what links you are making. Therefore, for example, one day clicking that children are 22-36 months for mathematics: numbers and then the next day 40-60 months, and then the time 22-36 again, then 30-50 months. This demonstrates a lack of understanding about where the child is developmentally, and although the development matters is not a checklist it is a best fit guide, we need to be consistent in how we are linking are observations to children’s learning. This means that when looking for quality we are looking for consistency and evidence that a child is meeting that developmental norm and we should not be clicking that judgement unless we know for sure it is a skill that a child is consistently demonstrating, but also we are considering which age band the child meets in developmentally in general as a best fit.

By Pauline Milsted

Director of Growing Together

Our Journey into Early Years Online Training

In August 2020 Growing Together developing early years launched our first ever early years online training. Our first event was our webinar ‘Childhood Trauma and Covid-19’. I was filled with nervousness as I logged onto the online webinar platform to do my first ever early years online training. After many hours of preparation, reading and more importantly practise and talking the topic through with anyone that would listen to me. Apologies to all of those friends who are not early years focused!

Early years online training was a completely different experience to my previous training I have delivered, which has been face to face and you can read peoples cues of engagement and easily get that interaction. For many of my first webinars, I felt like I was just chatting away to myself as I could not see anyone on the other side until we stopped to do activities; this was a new and strange feeling for myself.

I was so excited to receive some amazing reviews from our first series of webinars, which gave me the confidence to keep going. Susan and I are so excited by how much this early years online training has grown and developed and we really appreciate all of the feedback we have received as we continue to develop our webinars series and support professionals working in the early years sectors.

It is absolutely crazy to think that we now offer a range of early years online training as we are continuously releasing new webinars. Did you know since that very first webinar in the beginning of August 2020 we have run an amazing 58 webinars?! Even more incredible is that we have many more planned for the new year! You can check them out here by clicking on our link to our online training on the website.

In a year that has been very challenging for everyone around the world, as we social distance, lock down and spend more time on our own. This has really opened up a world for online training, and although we miss the opportunity of the physical coming together of training and having a chat over a cup of coffee or tea. We have seen the power and value of the early year’s community coming together online in our webinars, people pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and turning the videos or microphones on. Learning a new way to work, share ideas and connect with one another. What an amazing privilege we have had as a company to bring professionals across the early year’s community together in our online training.

We have spoken to people from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Omen, Malta, India, Dubia, Australia, Finland, America and China, just to name a few places. Wow, what an incredible opportunity we have had to bring people together who have a passion and care for early years through our online training all over the world. We would just like to take the opportunity to thank you for being a part of this online training journey with us. We can’t wait to continue to develop our online training for the early years more.