6. Understanding Emergent Literacy Assessment Practices

With Sehyun Yun

“Early childhood assessment should guide teachers to provide the best educational opportunities for children and, ultimately, benefit the child.”

Piker & Jewkes, 2013

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Becoming Assessment Literate

6.3 Understanding Diverse Literacy Assessment Practices

6.4 Assessment Strategies and Tools

Educators use a variety of assessment tools and practices, like the observational assessment Mr. Costello reviews in the opening vignette, to gain insight into children’s emergent literacy knowledge. Mr. Costello will keep his observational note, along with the other pieces of assessment data he gathers over time, to develop a holistic picture of Isabella’s emerging literacy skills. He knows when a single data point is combined with additional pieces of assessment information a more complete understanding of a child’s literacy knowledge begins to emerge. Children’s work samples, data from standardized assessments, and documentation from other observational assessments collectively inform his understanding of Isabella’s literacy enactments. By strategically combining formal and informal assessment sources to demonstrate what young children know, Mr. Costello embraces a strengths-based assessment approach and intentionally positions children like Isabella as active literacy agents ready to communicate, learn, and engage as readers and writers in the world.

6.1 Introduction

Early childhood educators play an essential role in ascertaining how young children are developing nuanced understandings of emergent literacy skills. Embracing assessment as an ongoing and recursive practice supports educators’ efforts communicating children’s progress in meaningful ways. Strong assessment practices help engage diverse stakeholders including families, administrators, accreditation agencies, and children. Moreover, assessment data guides the instructional decisions educators make on a daily basis to enhance and promote young children’s rapidly evolving literacy skills and understandings. Accordingly, learning how to use diverse sets of assessment tools and interpret data to gain insight into young children’s evolving agency as readers, writers, and communicators is a critical part of an early educator’s professional practice. This chapter prepares educators to develop, implement, and interpret a variety of literacy assessment tools to document and enhance children’s emerging literacies.

This chapter will explore the following questions:

 How does becoming assessment literate allow educators to see, support, and document children’s emerging literacy skills?

What kinds of assessment tools do educators use to gain insight into young children’s emerging literacy skills?

 How do early educators integrate a variety of assessment practices into their curricular routines to document children’s emerging literacy skills?

6.2 Becoming Assessment Literate

Our text focuses on examining a comprehensive collection of literacy practices and strategies to ensure early educators are well prepared to nurture young children’s emerging literacies. Determining how to facilitate literacy experiences to meet individual children’s needs and interests relies on an educator’s knowledge, use, interpretation, and integration of a variety of assessment data points. To effectively engage children in rich language, reading, and writing experiences educators must become assessment literate. Assessment literate educators possess a strong understanding of a variety of assessment practices and know how to interpret assessment results to inform their decisions about curricular experiences for learners (Popham, 2011). Because assessment results influence learning opportunities for children, it is important for educators to develop intentional and ongoing assessment practices and routines that illuminate children’s literacy learnings. Assessments are designed to meet specific purposes and provide evidence of a child’s knowledge or skill at a particular moment in time. However, children’s emergent literacy knowledge involves the integration of complex language-based practices and it is unlikely a single assessment tool will provide all of the data necessary to make fully informed decisions. Therefore, knowing that all assessments have limitations, early educators need to develop a robust understanding of how, when, and why they use specific assessment tools to inform their work with children and families.

Educators and early education programs frequently use a variety of assessment measurement tools including standardized assessments, performance assessments, curriculum-based assessments, and observation-based assessments (Piker & Jewkes, 2013). Learning how to leverage diverse assessment tools to meet different purposes is an important aspect of an educator’s work with young learners and families. Becoming assessment literate empowers educators to critically analyze assessment data for biases, inherent in all assessments, that may under-represent a child’s emergent literacy knowledge. Accurate and full documentation of a child’s understanding is not only essential for designing curricular experiences for learners, but assessment results also influence the types of interventions or additional special education services children and families receive (McLean et al., 2020). Therefore, knowing how to use diverse sets of data to discuss a child’s emerging skills strengthens educators’ efforts advocating for children and families (Mindes & Jung, 2018).

Understanding how to use numerous assessment tools to advocate for children and families and guide young learners is emphasized by professional organizations, including the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Division of Early Childhood (DEC). Both organizations encourage early childhood educators to use data strategically to enhance young children’s learning experiences. These organizations also maintain assessments for young children must be developmentally appropriate and advance the use of observational assessment practices to capture children’s literacy performances within their natural environments (McLean et al., 2020, NAEYC & NAECS/SDE, 2003).

Fortunately, children’s literacy performances are readily observable across a child’s day as children talk, interact with text, and create their own drawings and writings to express their ideas. Knowing how to structure a child’s environment to elicit literacy rich interactions will make documenting children’s literacy enactments easier. Similarly, learning how to identify components of children’s literacy enactments and capture evidence of their emerging literacy skills as they play will enhance your savvy as an early childhood literacy educator. As you learn to see, document, and interpret children’s emerging literacies you will develop a repertoire of assessment and instructional practices that will inform your work facilitating literacy experiences for young children.

6.3 Understanding Diverse Literacy Assessment Practices

Young children enter classrooms with diverse backgrounds and literacy skills. Children’s daily emergent literacy expressions reveal what they know and understand about language, reading, and writing work. Interactions between language, reading, and writing are reciprocal and literacy enrichment in one arena bolsters knowledge and growth in another. Language development serves as a cornerstone for children’s acquisition of reading and writing. The integral nature of language, reading, and writing develops throughout infancy, toddlerhood, and the early childhood years. Intentional early childhood educators use varied assessment tools and data sources to gain comprehensive understandings of children’s cognitive literacy development across the domains of language, reading, and writing. Accordingly, literacy assessment is an important part of early educators’ mission to provide high-quality early literacy education for young children.

6.3a Formal Assessment Practices

Early educators use a variety of assessment tools to capture and analyze children’s literacy development and learning. Assessments, by design, are broadly identified as either formal (standardized) or informal. In early childhood education, formal assessments are used for various purposes including screening, diagnostic, readiness tests, and program evaluation (Kidd et al., 2019). Formal assessments use standardized instruments and processes that are administered, scored, and interpreted in the same way for all children (Shepard et al., 1998). This section examines the types of formal assessments and how and when we will use them to support children’s literacy learning.

6.3a1 Types of formal assessments. Formal standardized assessment results are translated into either norm-referenced scores or criterion-referenced scores. Norm-referenced scores allow educators to compare a child’s performance on specific skills to the performances of other children within their peer group. Age-based standard scores, age equivalent scores, and/or percentile ranks are frequently used to communicate norm-referenced assessment results. Norm-referenced assessments may be used to determine eligibility for early childhood special education services, however “norm-referenced tools should be used with caution, as the accuracy and predictive value of these tools may be compromised when used with young children” (Ohio Department of Education, 2010, p. 9).

Alternatively, criterion-referenced scores communicate how well a child performs against a set of predetermined standards or criteria. Criterion-referenced assessments use numerical scores to represent the degree to which a child has mastered specific content knowledge or gained proficiency with a set of skills. Both norm-referenced data and criterion-referenced data help educators understand what a child knows and understands at a given moment in time by either comparing a child’s performance to the performance of other children in their peer group or analyzing the child’s performance against specific criteria or developmental benchmarks (Brown & Rolfe, 2005). Table 6.1 presents a set of common criterion-referenced and norm-referenced assessments educators use to gain insight into children’s emergent literacy practices. The table highlights the specific literacy components evaluated by each assessment.

Table 6.1 Common Criterion and Norm-Referenced Assessments

Common Criterion and Norm-Referenced Assessments

6.3b2 Purposes for formal assessments. There are a number of reasons early educators integrate formal assessments into early childhood contexts. This section examines four purposes of formal assessment. Each of these approaches to assessment provides us a window into young children’s literacy development. Often the formal assessments used in early childhood spaces are selected by programs to align with national, state, or local requirements. Therefore, it is important for educators to understand the purposes of these selected instruments and how the data collected can be used. Figure 6.1 illustrates how assessment purposes and processes are mutually informative and fluid in nature.

Figure 6.1 Connection Between Assessment Purposes and Processes

Screening and readiness assessments are used in early childhood contexts to determine if a child needs further specialized evaluations or instructional interventions to ensure the child continues to thrive across developmental domains. These assessments seek to identify children who may benefit from additional intervention services designed to support a child’s cognitive, oral-linguistic, social-emotional, or physical development. Screening assessments are designed to be implemented and evaluated quickly to determine if follow-up interventions are required to support a child’s development. Consider the Apgar test performed on infants immediately after birth at the 1-minute and 5-minute mark. Focused on determining the child’s physical wellbeing, the Apgar monitors a child’s breathing, heart rate, muscle tone, skin color, and reflex irritability (Simon et al., 2021). If the child receives a low score on the scale, health care professionals will administer the necessary interventions to ensure a child thrives outside of the womb. Within school contexts, physical screening tools may be used to evaluate a child’s hearing or vision, and if their performance on the screening tools indicate areas of concern, the child will be referred for further evaluation by appropriate care providers. Screening assessments are frequently administered to all students at the beginning of the school year in order to find students who need intervention as early as possible.

Figure 6.2 Screening and Readiness

Readiness assessments seek to reveal what a child already knows about a set of precursory skills related to a specific domain. Intentional educators use children’s performances on readiness assessments to structure curricular opportunities for learners based on concepts a child is still acquiring and to build on knowledge the child already possesses. Readiness assessments should only be used to gain insight into what a child already knows and is ready to learn; they should not be used to perpetuate deficit perspectives that emphasize what a child cannot do which, by default, implies that a child is not ready. Simply put, although children may demonstrate different degrees of understandings at any given moment in time, all children are ready to learn. Unfortunately, school systems sometimes use readiness assessments as predictive measures to group or track children into specific instructional programs or ability-based classrooms. While it makes sense to reflect on data gained through readiness assessments in strategic ways, educators and school systems should not use this information to make broad generalizations about a child’s overall capabilities and should avoid using readiness data to make decisions or recommendations that limit children’s curricular and experiential opportunities, such as suggesting a child defer enrolling in kindergarten with age-appropriate peers (Brassard & Boehm, 2007). When assessment results are used to make decisions about a child’s access to curricular experiences, assessments become “high-stakes” for individual learners and the educational ramifications experienced by the child can persist throughout their academic career.

Early literacy assessments, developed for initial screening purposes, usually measure students’ phonemic awareness, alphabetic knowledge, and print knowledge which are literacy competencies associated with children’s future reading performance (Coyne & Harn, 2006). Results from literacy screening assessments help educators recognize which children might experience reading and writing difficulties in the future without additional instruction or intervention (Coyne & Harn, 2006). When considering early literacy screening data, educators should keep in mind that performances on initial screenings are suggestive of a child’s future performance. In reality, research documenting children’s literacy progressions overtime demonstrates that many students who demonstrate weaker phonological sensitivity (the ability to hear the sound components that make up words) on early literacy screening assessments will go on to become accomplished readers (National Research Council, 1998). This finding does not negate an educators’ need to monitor a child’s emerging phonological skills. If a child continues to demonstrate weak phonological sensitivity, it is increasingly likely the child will need more intensive support to develop proficient reading and writing skills (National Research Council, 1998). Therefore, early educators are encouraged to use children’s performances on screening assessments to provide intentional instructional literacy experiences targeting a child’s knowledge in specific literacy arenas. When emergent literacy screening, diagnostic, and readiness assessments are used in this way, early childhood educators gain insight into what their students currently know and can plan literacy experiences by targeting areas of growth for individual children (Ivernizzi et al., 2010)

Diagnostic assessments also document areas of strength and areas for growth across specific literacy components. Diagnostic assessment enables teachers to modify and improve the current instruction practices to support individual children (Coyne & Harn, 2006; Gilliam & Frede, 2015). Diagnostic assessments are more detailed than initial screening assessments and data from diagnostic assessments can help educators ascertain (a) the specific emergent literacy skills a child has mastered and which skills they are still developing, (b) the most promising intervention programs for children based on individual profiles, and (c) make intentional decisions about how to sort children into meaningful instructional groups (Coyne & Harn, 2006, p. 40).

Figure 6.3 Diagnostic

Progress monitoring assessments are used at periodic intervals overtime. Progress monitoring is appropriate for typically developing children as well as children who are meeting developmental milestones at a slower pace than their age-level peers. The Transdisciplinary-Based Play Assessment (TBPA) (Linder, 2008) is an example of a formal assessment system designed to document a child’s performances across developmental domains (i.e., sensorimotor, emotional and social, communication and language, and cognition). This particular assessment “presents a process for planning, implementing, and evaluating intervention for children from birth to 6 years of age who need supports to enhance their development” (Linder, 2008, p. 4). As the name suggests, TBPA is a play-based assessment and a play-facilitator guides the child through a series of play spaces designed to elicit particular performances. TBPA uses a team approach (including the family, educator, and other service providers) to evaluate a child’s understanding and establish baseline developmental performance levels. Upon completion of the initial observation-based assessment, the team works together to identify learning goals for the child, determine eligibility for additional services, and make recommendations for interventions.

Subsequently, educators use the TBPA Age Tables and 9-point Goal Attainment Scales to monitor a child’s development over time. The educator uses the scales to document the child’s play-based performances attending to the strategic interventions embedded to promote the child’s growth. The educator shares the progress monitoring reports with relevant stakeholders and uses the assessment data to modify instructional practices to support the child. Learning how to monitor young children’s developmental progress in response to special intervention services they are receiving is an essential assessment practice for all early childhood educators. It takes time to understand comprehensive developmental progressions used by formal assessment systems like TBPA but, ultimately, they are rich resources for educators, families, and early care programs. Such assessment systems provide educators with meaningful growth trajectories and support educators in the creation of developmentally appropriate learning experiences for all learners.

Figure 6.4 Progress Monitoring

Formal assessments support educators’ overall understanding of children’s literacy progress. In collaboration with families and outside specialists, educators use formal assessments along with other assessment practices to encourage holistic pictures of children. Figures 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4 summarize the purposes for formal assessment and the section below explores informal assessment practices educators use to make instructional decisions with children in mind.

6.3c Curriculum-Based Assessments

Curriculum-based assessments, a subset of criterion-referenced assessments, document a child’s mastery of specific goals and objectives after engaging in a particular curriculum. Early childhood educators use these assessments to identify the knowledge and skills the child possesses. Educators use information from curriculum-based assessments to design intentional instructional experiences in response to the child’s demonstrated knowledge.

Teaching Strategies GOLD^Ⓡ and Assessment, Evaluation, and Programing System for Infants and Children (AEPS) are two examples of common, curriculum-based assessment systems designed to support educators’ intentional documentation of children’s understandings and guide curricular decisions linked to children’s performances. Teaching Strategies GOLD^Ⓡ uses a digital portfolio assessment system to store and evaluate artifacts (e.g., photographs, videos, and observational notes) to capture children’s literacy expressions as they interact with their environment in authentic ways. GOLD^Ⓡ uses color-coded developmental milestone charts to monitor and support a child’s literacy growth. Similarly, AEPS is also grounded in observational assessment practices capturing children’s play-based expressions. AEPS provides educators with observational data forms to document how well a child performs specific tasks within sets of developmentally progressive, criteria-based learning objectives. APES uses a scaled evaluation system (i.e., 2- consistently meets criterion, 1- inconsistently meets criterion, and 0- does not meet criterion) to determine how children are currently expressing their emergent literacy skills.

Early childhood programs also develop their own sets of curriculum-based assessment practices. When early care and education centers create their own curriculum-based assessment programs they still use developmental progressions like the ones articulated in Virginia’s Early Learning & Development Standards (2021) to inform their work with young children. Designing their own curriculum-based assessment practices affords programs flexibility to align practices with their unique pedagogical philosophies, values, and goals (e.g., Montessori, Reggio, outdoor learning schools, STEAM centers, etc.). Curriculum-based assessment practices help educators strategically structure learning experiences to monitor and promote children’s progressions through critical literacy milestones.

6.3d Informal Assessment Practices

Informal assessments are frequently designed by the educator or the program to capture children’s literacy performances throughout the school day. Informal assessments are distinguished from formal assessments in that the assessment tools have not undergone extensive piloting with diverse student populations to determine developmental norms and establish inter-rater reliability, test-retest reliability, and validity metrics. The informal label does not mean these assessment practices are not as “good” as a formal assessment. In fact, informal assessment practices are essential aspects of early childhood educators’ daily routines. Informal assessments are grounded in systematic observation practices and typically leverage a number of documentation tools (e.g., anecdotal notes, observational running records, checklists, work samples, portfolios, etc.) to capture children’s literacy expressions within familiar play-based learning contexts. Data gathered within authentic contexts provides actionable information regarding the strengths and needs of individual children without the additional scoring or comparison of a child’s performance to other children (Brown & Rolfe, 2005; Lonigan, 2006; Navarrete et al., 1990).

Educators develop informal assessment for a variety of purposes. Some informal assessment tools capture children’s conversations, other tools document children’s attention to rhyme schemes embedded in songs and read alouds. Educators also use informal assessment tools to gain insight into children’s preferences and attitudes toward specific learning centers and literacy play materials. Well-designed informal assessment tools effectively document children’s literacy knowledge and expressions as they engage with “tasks that are personally meaningful, take place in real life contexts, and are grounded in naturally occurring instructional activities” (Epstein et al., 2004, p. 6). When designing and implementing informal assessments, educators need a clear understanding of developmental literacy progressions. Educators also need to know what individual children already understand about how language, reading, and writing interact to create literacy learning experiences and environments that support children’s emergent literacy knowledge (Navarrete et al., 1990). As educators continue to capture children’s literacy expressions over time, the intentional informal assessment notations accumulate in incremental ways to generate a more holistic representation of children’s literacy repertoires. In turn, as educators’ knowledge of each child continues to grow, they are able to make intentional instructional and curricular decisions to better support children’s literacy learnings.

When educators first begin using embedded assessment practices, it may feel awkward. Initially, children may pose for photos and perform for videos while the perfect authentic literacy enactments elude capture. Children may openly wonder why their teacher is constantly jotting notes, watching closely, taking photos, or making videos. That is wonderful. Invite children into the assessment experience, explain that capturing all of their thinking and creating shows what they already know about how the world works. When particular documentation tools are used frequently, children and educators view the assessment practice as a natural part of the classroom culture and the tools themselves become invisible.

6.3e Formative and Summative Assessment Practices

The terms formative and summative are frequently paired assessment terms focused on documenting children’s learning as they progress through units of study. Educators use formal and informal assessment tools as formative and summative assessments to gain an understanding of a child’s developmental progressions. Formative assessments are used to inform the next curricular and instructional decisions an educator will make to meet children’s interests, strengths, and needs (Kidd et al., 2019). The formative assessment methods include “all those activities undertaken by teachers […] to modify teaching and learning activities” (Black & William, 2010, p. 82). In order for these everyday assessment moments to be influential, educators need to (a) identify specific literacy learning goals, (b) select an assessment method for capturing evidence of the child’s emergent literacy performances, (c) create a plan for analyzing the assessment data collected, and (d) take time to interpret the assessment data to understand how a child is performing in relation to the specified literacy goals.

While formative assessments capture how a student is performing in the moment and support an educator’s efforts to promote a child’s learning in the near future, summative assessments seek to present a final (or summative) evaluation of student learning (Kidd et al., 2019). Summative assessments are often utilized at the end of instructional units to “capture what a student has learned” (National Research Council, 2001, p. 25). Early education centers also use summative assessment results to evaluate overall program effectiveness (Kidd et al., 2019).

6.4 Assessment Strategies and Tools

           Children possess a wealth of knowledge and curiosity that educators leverage intentionally to enrich, extend, and enhance the knowledge and skills children demonstrate. Assessment data guides educators’ differentiation practices and supports their efforts to provide meaningful and relevant learning experiences for individual learner’s literacy needs (Ivernizzi et al., 2010; Rosko, 2004). When considering how to embed effective assessment practices into daily instructional routines it is helpful to think of assessment as a series of ongoing evaluations that help educators’ notice and note young children’s literacy expressions. Intentional noticings influence how educators reshape the environment and curricular opportunities to continue to nurture and challenge a child’s emerging literacies. To fully document a child’s literacy understandings, educators need to feel comfortable using multiple assessment tools.

The following section describes a number of assessment tools educators use to capture children’s literacy expressions. The assessment tools are flexible and can be used in a variety of ways to focus educators’ intentional noticings. To fully represent a child’s emergent literacy knowledge, educators frequently need to use a combination of assessment tools. Learning how to manipulate a core set of assessment tools eases educators’ efforts embracing ongoing assessment practices. Anecdotal notes, observational running records, checklists, frequency counts, artifact sampling, documentation panels, and portfolios provide educators with a variety of options for capturing children’s literacy expressions. These assessment tools can be used informally or to provide evidence as part of a formal assessment process (e.g., AEPSi, GOLD®, and Transdisciplinary-Based Play). The flexible nature of these assessment tools allows educators to capture children’s literacy expressions throughout the day. Moreover, these assessment practices can become a regular part of children’s and educators’ daily routines.

6.4a Anecdotal Notes

Anecdotal notes are brief and descriptive notes made after a specific behavior or interaction occurs (Mindes & Jung, 2015). In the classroom, teachers write anecdotal notes to record student behaviors, skills, and performance and compile the anecdotal notes on students as a document system. The cumulative information can be used to track progress and changes in a child’s behavior and performance as well as plan for activities and strategies to use in the classroom. Once environments are established, educators can use anecdotal notes to document children’s literacy performances as they play with their peers in literacy enriched contexts.

Figure 6.5 provides an example of an anecdotal note captured by Jinah’s teacher while she was writing a grocery list in the dramatic play center. As the teacher paused to watch and listen to Jinah and Emma, she focused in on Jinah’s emergent writing process. Jinah’s focused effort illustrates an emerging knowledge of the alphabetic principle and her ability to identify initial, and some ending, phonemes.

Figure 6.5 Example of an Anecdotal Note

6.4b Observational Running Records

Observational running records are detailed and comprehensive notes written while an event is happening. Running records capture an individual child’s (or a group of children’s) language and literacy behaviors in a short period of time, generally between 5 and 10 minutes. The extended nature of a running record requires planning to ensure the educator has enough additional instructor support to allow for a focused observation with minimal interruptions. When planning to conduct a running record it is a good idea to identify the child, the context, and the duration of the observation before scripting the observational data. Once a running record is complete, educators typically rejoin the learning environment or shift to observing another child. Evaluations of the running records are completed at a later time, when the educator has the time to intentionally analyze the child’s performances against relevant milestones, trajectories, or benchmarks. Educators use running records throughout the year and the collection of records reveals a child’s growth overtime.

Figure 6.6 provides an example of a running record focused on a child’s language patterns, physical performances, and emergent reading skills. During this observational assessment moment, Ms. Everston planned to observe Danielle during outdoor recess to document who she decided to play with and the storyline she decided to enact. During the observation block, Ms. Everston worked to write down everything she directly observed regarding the child’s actions including body movements and gestures, verbal exchanges, and facial expressions. Notice that she is not involved in Danielle’s play while writing notes, and in her written notations she refrains from making judgements or assumptions about the child’s intentions or literacy performances.

Figure 6.6 Example of a Running Record

6.4c Checklists

Checklists are useful tools for documenting some emergent literacy skills and behaviors (Mindes & Jung, 2015). Intentionally designed checklists can help an educator attend to specific literacy performances in the moment. Checklists are particularly useful when an educator is learning to notice particular literacy expressions or capturing a child’s expressions during play. Educators can use checklists to quickly document specific literacy skills and use the list to determine subsequent instructional opportunities. Checklists do not indicate how well a child performs, they document moments when a child did or did not perform a particular literacy skill. In the opening vignette at the beginning of this chapter, Mr. Costello used a checklist to document the letter names Isabella readily identifies as she plays with letters at the water table. Figure 6.7 provides an example of a letter identification checklist designed to document children’s letter play across a variety of contexts. Notice how this checklist is enhanced with a spot for anecdotal notations. Adding a space for anecdotal notes helps mediate the fact that a checklist alone provides limited insight into a child’s literacy performances.

Figure 6.7 Observational Checklist

Collecting artifacts as evidence of children’s literacy expressions is an essential authentic assessment practice for early childhood educators. Artifacts provide evidence of children’s literacy expressions and learning at a particular moment in time. Photographs, videos, work samples, child generated products, and audio recordings of children engaging in literacy explorations are some examples of artifacts educators collect over time to understand children’s emergent literacy performances. Deciding what artifacts to hold onto and what artifacts or archival moments to pass by can be overwhelming as educators first begin collecting documentation of a child’s performances. To begin the process, consider collecting at least one type of literacy-focused artifact (e.g. a photograph, a short video, a writing sample, etc.) from each child every week. As each artifact is collected, use the developmental reading, writing, and language progressions the school uses to notice what can be readily observed about a child’s literacy knowledge. With practice, recognizing when an artifact yields important insight about a child’s literacy knowledge and how to analyze different artifacts becomes easier. Over time, these authentic assessments are joyful reminders for educators and families of how much a child learns over the course of a year.

6.4e Frequency Counts

As the name suggests, frequency counts are used to document how often a particular event occurs. Educators create frequency count charts to capture how many times a child performs or engages in a particular literacy event. For example, an educator might use a frequency count to monitor how often a child self-selects reading a book in the class library or uses the puppet theatre to tell a story. The information provided by such frequency counts provides some insight into where a child spends their time, but the information is limited. A frequency count does not capture how the child is interacting with the literacy rich materials and might not capture other play spaces where the child is using their literacy skills (e.g., when the child uses cookbooks and recipe cards in the kitchen). Therefore, frequency counts should not be used in isolation to draw conclusions about the child’s overall literacy enactments.

On the other hand, literacy focused frequency counts may be most impactful when educators use them to determine how frequently particular learning centers and literacy-rich materials are utilized by the children over a period of time. This type of data could help an educator notice trends in the children’s literacy play routines to make intentional changes to the children’s instructional environment. A frequency count could lead an educator to enhance particular spaces by adding writing or supplemental text materials, or prompt the educator to model the use of specific literacy tools to support children’s literacy-based play (e.g., felt boards, dry erase boards, graph paper).

6.4g Event Sampling

Event sampling is used to document a child’s performances during a specific event. Charts can be used to quickly capture when a child engages in particular literacy events. Figure 6.8 provides an example of an event sampling chart designed to strategically focus on children’s explorations of fiction and non-fiction texts in the class library. Collected over an extended period of time, the basic event sampling chart information yields some insight into children’s text preferences and what the child attends to when reading or retelling a text. When more information about a child’s behavior is desired, event sampling may be combined with an antecedent, behavior, and consequence (ABC) assessment frame to support an educators’ sequencing of a particular event. Figure 6.8 provides an example of how the teacher, Mr. Thompson, uses the ABC assessment frame to analyze a video he captured of Jonathan in the library corner. Mr. Thompson uses the ABC lens to focus on Jonathan’s emergent literacy practices while he retells a story to his friend and some stuffed animals in the library. The analysis space summarizes the child’s interactions and articulates the specific knowledge, skills, and dispositions observed throughout the event.

Figure 6.8 Event Sampling