Kirsty Liljegren: Hello, my name is Kirsty Liljegren. I am an early childhood trained teacher who has worked across a range of kindergarten programs in Victoria and I'm currently a mentor. You will see me across these eight play vignettes as I work and observe alongside you, exploring their relationship with the Early Years Assessment and Learning Tool. These eight play vignettes have been designed to support you to think about quality assessment and observation practices in the context of the eight Domains of the Early Years Assessment and Learning Tool.
Kirsty Liljegren: They highlight assessment as an everyday practice and how the tool can be used to support you and your colleagues to inform your pedagogy rather than it being viewed as an additional requirement. This is a tool to support you to reflect and develop your practice and provide really useful strategies to build into your program or use as a stimulus to adapt to what works in your philosophies. This should not result in children being taken out of the kindergarten program to be assessed with specific activities or checklists, but used as an inclusive tool to support observations in everyday play.
Kirsty Liljegren: In each of these videos you will have the chance to observe children learning and engaging with each other, their educators and their environment in high quality Victorian kindergarten services. When viewing these videos it is worth remembering that the Early Years Assessment and Learning Tool is mapped against and aligned to the Victorian Early Learning and Development Framework. And whilst the language used in the tool might be slightly different, the intent is the same as the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development framework.
Kirsty Liljegren: The aim of this is to support you and your team to use the tool in an authentic and meaningful way in partnership with the approved learning and development framework. These videos are designed to be short snippets of play to provide you with the opportunity to engage with them at times that suit you best. You could watch these one or two at a time and reflect on them in your pedagogical teams using the accompanying fact sheet to drive conversation and questioning.
Kirsty Liljegren: Or perhaps you are an educational leader who could discuss these with your team to facilitate critical reflection on observation and assessment practices. The videos provide an opportunity to explore the different ways in which children's learning and development can be analysed and in doing so, serve as a reflective tool to support knowledge of children and assessment. Finally, we invite you to consider the potential from these moments of play to inform the Early Years Planning Cycle.
Kirsty Liljegren: I encourage you to engage with these videos in the way that best suits your ongoing professional learning.
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