plz respond to this student about what she wrote about the assignment

Student 2

The child that I observed was the little boy in the yellow shirt.  I learned that he both walks and climbs the stairs without help.  I also observed that he was able to shuffle through the pile of toys without falling over and that he was able to bend over and pick toys up without falling.  When asked if he can find a pilot for his helicopter and if he can find a boat he points in both cases, although he does go to play with the boat a moment later.  His language development is still at a level where he calls the helicopter a plane, but he does say a couple of two word statements.  Those statements are “it flies” and “big boat”.  When asked who could ride in the boat, he grabs the closest toy which is a horse and he calls it a horse.  He also points to a turtle decoration and says turtle.  He spends some time watching the other little boy play, but also spends time sitting near him playing. When the boy in green tries to take his boat, he stands up and taking the boat with him goes to the far side of the play area.  He pointed when asked questions more than he spoke.

Other performance-based assessments that I would like to complete would be ones that would help me to fill in the checklist better as it would give a better picture of what his strengths and weaknesses are.  I would choose to do these because by covering most if not all of the checklist it will be easier to make better conclusions about if his development is on track.  Games could be introduced to the play session to observe different skills, as could a snack time, and clean up time and these could be further assessed using a numerical rating scale to get a better idea of where his development is along a scale (Wortham, 2012).

Some of the advantages of performance based assessments are they a good tool for monitoring young children’s development, they are in context and can be incorporated into existing activities, they can be adapted to each child and their circumstance, and they can be ongoing (Wortham, 2012).  Some of the disadvantages of these assessments are that they are subjective, the teacher needs to be skilled to interpret them correctly, they can be time consuming and complex, and there are concerns about the validity and reliability of them (Wortham, 2012). I feel that with proper training the advantages outweigh the disadvantages to using performance-based assessments with young children.