My DD goes to public school, but I imagine the assessment is about the same process. At ours there were I think 4 stations, each one tool maybe 10 minutes. One was physical where they had her do things like jump, stand on one foot, walk a straight line, etc. One was fine motor and she had to string beads on a string and a couple other things. One was language where she had to recognize words and letters. And the last one was supposedly social / emotional. That last one bugged me the most. Part of what they had to do was take a drawing of a person that was half way done and then finish it and then the guy asked her some questions about it. In the end they give you a final score and someone comes to discuss it with you and how the kid did and whether or not they are ready to start kindergarten and what they need to work on, etc. Relatively painless really. We tried not to make a big deal of it and DD did not seem nervous at all. She thought it was sort of fun and games. But then she had also attended montessori preschool so the activities were mostly not unfamiliar to her.
Kindergarten Assessment?
We are going for Justin's kindy assessment in a little bit, just wondering what to expect. It is a catholic school
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I didn't know they still did assessments.
dd goes to public school (pre-k) and is already pre registered for K in August.
dd goes to public school (pre-k) and is already pre registered for K in August.
In our district they do them because there is also the option of a "Young 5" program for kids who are old enough to start kindergarten but who aren't "ready" for one reason or another, or parents decide to give them an extra year before kindergarten. I know in other districts in this area they don't have that program and don't do any kind of assessment since the only option is kindergarten.
it really varies from district to district - and certainly from school to school if you're talking private schools. some schools do nothing other than filling out paperwork. some do brief achievement assessments - for the purposes of grouping kids with like-abilities or to tailor instruction. some do just a basic academic readiness screening - counting, cutting, etc. some look at other abilities like listening comprehension or verbal fluency.
it's tough to know what to expect! do you know any parents who have older kids in the school?
it's tough to know what to expect! do you know any parents who have older kids in the school?
My dds go to Catholic school. I don't know if they are all the same, but I can tell you about their assessment. They take the kids in the room and do some large group and small group activities. I know they do a story and some other large group things to observe the attention span. Can they sit and listen to a story? Then they do some small group activities at the tables. I know some are small motor skill type things. One was patterning where the kids had to continue a pattern started by the teacher. Neither of my dds had any trouble at all. It's not really academic, but I think if there were any glaring delays it would probably show. While the kids were in one room for the assessment, the parents were in the next room having an orientation.
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