This post from the 2019 Minnesota Early Intervention Summer Institute draws on the session, Flipping Your Assessment Practices from Standardized to Personalized.
Personalizing Your Assessment Techniques
Today’s post from the 2019 MN Early Intervention Summer Institute draws on Flipping Your Assessment Practices from Standardized to Personalized. This session was presented by Kristie Pretti-Frontczak, PhD. Pretti-Frontczak is an author, speaker and educational consultant. She offers a blog and podcast with resources for early childhood professionals.
Pretti-Frontczak argues that even in an age of accountability, it’s essential to be playful and let the child take the lead in assessments. Not only does this make for a more enjoyable experience for everyone, but it also produces authentic results. According to Pretti-Frontczak, there are three key components to authentic assessment.
Familiarity: The assessment should consist of familiar activities using familiar objects in a familiar setting with familiar people.
Accuracy: Have you ever heard comments like the following? “That’s not all she can do!” “He was doing it yesterday!” Those comments are an indication that the assessment is less than accurate. The assessment activities and results should resonate with those who know the child best.
Play: Assessment should look just like play, and the child’s own inclinations should steer the activity.
Assessment in early childhood should look like play, and the child should take the lead.
Pretti-Frontczak recommends taking plenty of time to do an assessment. It can be difficult to slow down and match your pace and attention to a child’s when you have a packed agenda. Ultimately, though, you’ll get better results if you engage in organic play and conversation with the child, rather than checking items off a list.
Thanks to our presenter, participants, and volunteer Jess Moen, and to the Minnesota Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood Special Education—sponsors of the Summer Institute for the past 36 years!
This installment from the 2019 Minnesota Early Intervention Summer Institute recaps Understanding and Responding to Challenging Behavior Using a Holistic Approach.
Understanding Why Children Act the Way They Do with Tools from Education, Mental Health, and Neuroscience
We’re back with another installment from the 2019 MN Early Intervention Summer Institute! Today’s post recaps Understanding and Responding to Challenging Behavior Using a Holistic Approach, presented by Sally Hansen, MA, MFT. Hansen is an early childhood special education professional development facilitator with the Minnesota Centers of Excellence for Young Children with Disabilities.
Hansen explained that, like the proverbial tip of an iceberg, children’s behavior provides some clues as to what’s going on under the surface, but it doesn’t tell us the whole story. So she shared ideas from different evidence-based disciplines to help professionals dig deeper. Participants took a look at challenging behaviors through a behavioral or education lens, a mental health lens, and a neuroscience lens.
From a behavioral or education perspective, every behavior has a purpose or “function.” In essence, a behavior’s function is either to obtain something or to escape something.
We can add complexity to this basic breakdown using a mental health lens. We may ask questions like:
Why is the behavior happening?
Is the child trying to communicate an emotional need?
Does this behavior help the child organize, regulate, and calm him/herself?
Has the child experienced trauma, toxic stress, or abuse/neglect? How might that knowledge impact the way you view the behavior and plan supports for the child?
We can also take into account genetic and environmental influences on a child’s behavior. We know that a child’s genes and environment combine to shape his or her body, brain and nervous system. These factors also impact the child’s development of executive function skills.
Summer Institute participants explored new practices for addressing challenging behaviors and categorized those they were already using.
From a neuroscience perspective, then, behaviors result from children’s neurological and biological processes. They can also be an adaptation to a child’s history and present circumstances.
Each discipline sheds light on a different aspect of challenging behaviors. The various disciplines also offer different solutions for such behaviors.
Put your educator cap on, and add some behavioral solutions to your toolkit:
Teach children a replacement skill to substitute for a challenging behavior.
Embed instruction into routines.
From a mental health perspective, support social and emotional development through play and social stories.
Neuroscience tells us that adults can best encourage children’s development of executive function skills through activities like imaginary play, storytelling, movement challenges (such as songs and games), puzzles, cooking, and matching and sorting games.
Child psychologist and educator Ann Gearity, PhD, LICSW, writes, “Before you try to change a behavior, admire it. It represents the child’s best effort to communicate.” That’s good advice, but sometimes, it’s easier said than done. Hansen shared pro tips for when children’s behaviors start pushing our buttons.
Be calm (regulate yourself).
Be quiet (give time for child to calm).
Be with (keep the child company; use your calm, quiet body to help him/her regulate).
Be kind and empathetic (remind yourself that the child is asking for help).
Repair (new learning).
Anne Gearity writes, “Repair happens through interactions, repeated again and again.” (Her Developmental Repair: A Training Manual is a valuable guide to working with young children who have experienced complex trauma.)
Recognizing that managing challenging behaviors takes a toll on early childhood professionals themselves, Hansen built information on self-care into the session. What practices might professionals use to “put their own oxygen mask on first,” as the saying goes?
Hansen recommends mindfulness apps like the free Insight Timer, as well as reflective practice. Reflective practice is a form of professional development for early childhood professionals.
You can learn about reflective practice in an introductory course on reflective supervision/consultation from CEED. (Find all our online courses.)
For those who don’t have access to reflective supervision or want to engage in reflection outside of a reflective relationship, Hansen offered these guiding questions:
Thanks to our presenter, participants, and volunteers Jessica Bosacker and Jodi Altringer, and to the Minnesota Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood Special Education—sponsors of the Summer Institute for the past 36 years.
CEED is launching a brand-new online course this fall that can help both early childhood professionals and parents of young children support an important part of children’s growth.
The Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) is launching a brand-new online course this fall that can help both early childhood professionals and parents of young children support an important part of children’s growth.
Executive function skills are brain processes that help us focus on tasks, switch from one task to another, control impulses, and carry out our goals. For example, these skills enable us to put down a book to answer the phone, work to perfect a new tune on the piano, or complete a homework assignment (perhaps while conquering the urge to reach for the TV remote).
Children use their executive function skills to make plans and work towards goals.
“Executive function is a set of skills that nearly all of us come into the world ready to learn,” says Deborah Ottman, director of online professional development at CEED. Infants start to develop executive function skills at birth. All the adults that surround them—families, educators, and caregivers—share in the job of helping them develop executive function.
That might sound like a daunting prospect—one that you might need a PhD in child development to tackle! But, Marie Opsahl Lister says, that’s not at all the case.
“I think that people who take this course will be surprised at how accessible executive function—or EF—skills are,” she shares. “When you first hear the phrase ‘executive function,’ it can feel a little intimidating. But when I really dig into these skills with students there’s always this lightbulb moment. There’s a realization that EF skills are something all of us use on a daily basis to organize our day, make decisions, control our impulses, and so on.”
Executive function skills support both academic and social success. Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash
It’s well known that the first six years of life lay an important foundation for success in school and social relationships. It’s no coincidence that these years are crucial to developing executive function skills. Growth in executive function accelerates during early childhood. It continues at a slower pace through early adulthood.
“When children who demonstrate they’ve begun to acquire these skills start school, they typically do better academically and socially. This holds true as they move into adolescence, the teen years, and adulthood, too,” Ottman says.
So how can we set infants and children up for success with strategies that support executive function? CEED’s new course will provide answers to that question. And it will help families and early childhood professionals build on the many ways in which they are already helping children gain these skills.
“After taking this course, parents and early childhood professionals will be able to identify the ways they are already encouraging the use of EF skills in the children they care for. And we’ll help them intentionally scaffold the development of these skills,” Lister explains.
Here’s what the course will cover:
What executive function is and how it develops through infancy and early childhood
What factors impact the development of executive function skills
How executive function relates to positive outcomes like academic knowledge, social skills, and resilience
How executive function issues are related to developmental disorders and mental health problems
Intervention strategies that you can use in your work with young children, or in your parenting
Like all CEED’s online professional development, this course does not take place in real time. Students have 24/7 access to the course content. While there are due dates for assignments and activities, students can fit them into their existing schedule in the way that works best for them. Registration is open until September 30. For more details, visit ceed.umn.edu/online-courses/executive-function.
