Documenting and assessing children’s learning professional learning package

This course elaborates on how documenting and assessing children’s learning helps educators gain a deeper understanding of children’s interests, strengths and abilities. It also explains how educators can use this knowledge to support and extend children’s learning.

In this course, you will:

• learn about the purpose of documenting children’s learning
• uncover common myths about documentation
• discover how to save time and make documentation more effective
• find out how to use documentation within your planning
• explore the practices and philosophies of  2 services.

Get this module as a part of an annual subscription.

This course expands on the ideas and concepts outlined in the introductory course, ‘Documenting and assessing children’s learning with Dr Anne Kennedy’. It is highly recommended—though not essential—that you complete the introductory course before starting this course, which delves deeper into the topic.

This course will help you learn a variety of strategies and new ways to document and assess children’s learning. You will understand the importance of documentation and how it is essential to driving children’s learning and high-quality educational programs.

You will hear from services about the methods and strategies they use when documenting and assessing children’s learning, and you will be invited to reflect on and consider your own practice moving forward. You will also be encouraged to consider research, theory and practice in your work and how this underpins children’s learning and development. The planning cycle—which is the foundation of the educational program, future planning and each child’s learning and development—will also be explored in depth.

In this course you will: 

• uncover some of the many layers of documenting and assessing children’s learning
• unpack the planning cycle
• understand why quality observations matter
• explore critical reflection and documentation on a deeper level
• learn ways to include the perspectives of children and families in documentation and assessment.

This course also includes digital access to three ECA Box of Provocations cards.

Get this module as a part of an annual subscription.

This course explains how critical reflection forms a crucial part of professional practice in early childhood education and care. It will provide you with a model and suggestions on how to make critical reflection a positive part of your everyday practice.

Learning outcomes

In this course, you will:

• learn how to support children’s learning, development and wellbeing through critical reflection
• explore the three elements integral to your success as a critical thinker: self-awareness, developing relationships with others, and building your own and your team’s knowledge
• be introduced to the Circle of Change Revisited model of critical thinking.

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Presented by Rod Soper, this practical course will help you rediscover the planning cycle and show you how it can be used to reinvigorate not only your thinking but also your approach to children’s learning and development. By addressing common misconceptions, the course will outline how to avoid making mistakes when using the planning cycle and foster strong analytical thinking skills within teams. This course is suitable for educators at any stage of their career.

In this course, you will:

• revisit and rediscover the planning cycle
• learn about the common misconceptions related to the planning cycle
• reflect on your thinking around the planning cycle
• learn to approach planning with diversity of mind.

Please allow time to view this session in one sitting as your progress through the webinar cannot be saved.

Get this webinar as a part of an annual subscription.

Play-based learning is a cornerstone of early childhood education. In recent years, the concept of intentional teaching has also gained momentum. This on-demand webinar discusses a new approach to balancing open-ended play with intentional teaching, using the Pedagogical Play-framework. According to the framework, three main types of play—open-ended, modelled and purposefully framed—can be used in multiple combinations to support young children’s learning.

This on-demand webinar will:

• help you understand the Pedagogical Play-framework and the relationship between open-ended, modelled and purposefully framed play
• introduce you to the theoretical ideas in the work of Vygotsky that underpin the Pedagogical Play-framework.

Get this webinar as a part of an annual subscription.