Assessing Literacy and Numeracy

 Educators who know and understand children well will be able to effectively support their emerging literacy and numeracy.  These relationships are important for both connection and learning.  An essential component of the relationships is the reflective practice of the educator.  Recording and making learning visible is another.  These are also both important professional competencies. 

Docket et al describe in their article the way that narrative assessment in the form of Learning Stories was used in a Project in southern Adelaide starting in 2004.  This project and the article seek to define “nature of powerful mathematical ideas and their relevance to early childhood” using an action research approach explores ways to assess children's mathematical learning. When I thought about shapes and geometry, I thought all that was needed was for the children to know the names of some regular shapes.

The article describes conversations with early childhood educators working together to link these powerful maths ideas to the SACSA Developmental Learning Outcomes* In this case - Children are intellectually inquisitive:

It was really not something I thought they would be inquisitive about. By using the matrix, I can see that they can develop their inquisitiveness by asking lots of questions about lots of different shapes in their environment--not just triangles and circles--and can investigate why things are the way they are. This will take them into asking about how things are used, where they come from, whether some shapes are better than others for a particular job, and why some shapes look better than others. It is exciting for the children--and for me!

The Thurman article considers play-based, curriculum and dynamic assessments in an attempt to find a valid way to assess children literacy development in a context that fits the child.  Interestingly they concede that while“…standardized assessment methods are certainly useful in making normative comparisons between children and their peers, it is important to remember that these approaches do not always provide comprehensive measures of children’s level of functioning; rather, they provide samples of behavior that are likely to be limited in scope.”

Bracken and Walker (1997) in Thurman suggest “…the true potential of assessment techniques lies not in their ability to provide diagnostic labels for use in classification of children, but rather in their ability to utilize data to guide the provision of appropriate services through the modification of educational environments.” This definition fits very closely with the shift in assessing and planning for children's learning in early childhood from deficit focused checklists to more holistic narrative assessment. 

After exploring these alternative assessment styles and modalities Thurman and McGrath turn their attention to literacy development suggesting the validity of these methods in assessing children's literacy. 

While the article makes an excellent argument for non-standardized assessment is falls short in its scope of what literacy in early childhood entails.  There is no mention of anything other than text as literacy learning. 

Dockett, S., Harley, E., & Perry, B. (2007). Learning stories and children's powerful mathematics. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 9(2).




THURMAN, K.S. and MCGRATH, M.C., 2008. Environmentally Based Assessment Practices: Viable Alternatives to Standardized Assessment for Assessing Emergent Literacy Skills in Young Children. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 24(1), pp. 7-24.

*SACSA Developmental Learning Outcomes*

SACSA (South Australian Standards and Accountability Framework) was a Birth-18 years curriculum used in all settings.  The EYLF is drawn very heavily on the theoretical underpinnings of SACSA.  For more information about SACSA Home