While a picture is worth a thousand words, a child’s words paint the best picture of social and emotional development. After 15 years of 
teaching, observing and later rating early learning classrooms, I have found that real, recorded data is the most effective tool for gauging the development of crucial behavioral skills.
Traditionally, teachers have written down our perceptions of children’s interactions during daily activities. Electronic recordings captured over time during play give us indisputable evidence of a child’s ability to cooperate, interact and regulate emotions. The recordings can be replayed and studied in depth.
Today it is possible to work with children to improve social and emotional skills whereas before, this type of data existed as more of a subjective inference on the teacher’s part and was harder to identify. Recorded data supports best practices in measuring progress of social and emotional skill development:
Recorded data does not rely on our interpretations but instead provides solid evidence of real, ordinary activities and naturally occurring behavior.
- Data from observations is used to measure progress in the context of real, ordinary activities, evaluating naturally occurring behavior.
- This provides an exact measurement because it is a recording of real behavior.
- The ability to replay recordings ensures that comments and observations are accurate.
- Situational and individual bias is eliminated.
Observations are conducted as a natural part of daily activities, not as a time-added or pullout activity.
- With recorded data, teachers don’t have to be present all of the time to observe. They can focus on other children or other activities and rate the progression of the children in the recordings later.
An assessor must be familiar with the children and spend time in the classroom. With recorded data, teachers who are most familiar with children can periodically monitor behavioral skills and pinpoint emotional control issues early on.
- Recorded data can be added to electronic portfolios to demonstrate any behavior issues to parents or counselors.
Recorded data measures progress based on natural performance.
- The recordings actually take place in the natural environment, eliminating the need to simulate that setting during observations.
- Student performance is recorded in real time, as it occurs.
- Children are not aware that their interactions are being recorded so that they can be replayed later, so they act naturally.
The post Using Live Recordings to Paint a Clear Picture of Behavioral Skills appeared first on Hatch.
