Capturing milestones in children's learning in the Midlothian Nursery Group

Project summary

The group (Cockpen Nursery School, Cuikenburn Nursery School, Mayfield Nursery School, Mountesk Nursery School, Strathesk Nursery School, and Thornybank Nursery School) wanted to re-visit observational skills and share interesting practice. They established three main objectives: 

• to improve the quality of interaction with children
• to use assessment information to identify learning outcomes/next steps in children’s learning
• to share assessment information with children, parents, staff and other professionals. 

They also wanted to build in links with the four capacities of A Curriculum for Excellence (ACfE). 

They based the changes they made to observation on the system of ‘Learning Stories’ from New Zealand, which was seen to be useful in identifying next steps in learning. After a period of reflection and dialogue the group produced a new proforma to capture milestones in the children’s learning in an ongoing way that would allow formative and summative assessment to take place. As well as having space for each of the five key areas (Emotional, Personal and Social , Communication and Language, Knowledge and understanding of the world, Expressive and Aesthetic and Physical development and Movement) and the four ACfE capacities, space was created for next steps, staff comment, home comment and child’s comment.

Case study extract

The richness of the observations began automatically to produce multiple strands of evidence of learning, and therefore a very efficient way of gaining knowledge of the child within the five key areas and four capacities.  This whole area of development was enhanced by the use of digital cameras for collecting evidence.  

Staff shared this evidence of learning. It was then shared with children and parents by putting the Learning Story sheets into the children’s folios.  

Originally, the nursery staff had been compiling folios of children’s work, which were given to children and families at the end of their time at nursery.  These folios had been modified over time so that now parents and children start them off, continue to borrow them, and are encouraged to add things throughout the nursery year.  To facilitate this they are available in the class and children often seek to look at them themselves or with others. Comments, which match the bullet points from A Curriculum Framework 3-5 were added in an attempt to share the curriculum with parents and individualise the child’s development within the five key areas.  One of the aims in adding the learning stories/observations to the folios was to enhance this process in a more focused way. Parents were encouraged to add comments giving a more holistic view of the child’s development. Staff scribed the children’s comments. 

Staff are invited from feeder primaries to view the folios and use the information to compliment the transition document required by the authority as part of an exchange of information. In fact there is far more information in the folios than could ever be transmitted through the summative report. In one feeder primary the P1 teacher has asked the children to take their folders into school as a homework exercise linked to family. 

The visiting educational psychologist and integration team family workers who were given access to the folios and learning stories commented favourably on the evidence provided in them as giving a true and better overall picture of the children in context, their achievements and attainment. 

Most nurseries are set out in learning /teaching areas to reflect and facilitate the delivery of the curriculum framework 3–5. Within this project, the observations of the children were discussed at the end of each session. Next steps were identified and directly linked to planning for individuals and small groups through the learning /teaching areas. This ensured the practice reflected the essence of formative assessment as immediate, meaningful and dynamic. 

A more holistic method was tried by another nursery combining a number of the observations and taking into account the social context of the learning to form a learning record for individual children. This was then shared with the child and family on an ongoing way. 

One nursery started to share the learning intentions with children in their key group at the beginning of each session and encouraged the children to talk about what they had learned at the end of the day. Parents were encouraged to ask: ‘what did you learn today?’ 

Teacher’s comments

‘Every nursery child’s needs are met and achievements recorded. This is a more straightforward format for everyone to use and parents to understand.’ 

Parent’s comments

‘Yes I think the new folder is a very good idea for the children so that they can share comments with the staff and other children about themselves.’ 

Child’s comments

‘I used the nails and banging things (hammers), I made Thomas the Tank Engine.’

Contact details

If you would like further information on this case study, please contact the local authority assessment co-ordinator. You can find contact details for each authority area on our local authority co-ordinators' contacts page.