Early Learning Center Prepares Students for Elementary School with an Engaging Formative Assessment

Gahanna, OH | serving 75 students 6 weeks to 10 years of age

SUMMARY

Gahanna is part of The Goddard School, an award-winning nationwide network of accredited childcare centers offering early learning and afterschool programs. As all Goddard schools, Gahanna is focused on providing “childcare beyond daycare” – a rich early learning experience that helps children develop emotionally, socially, cognitively and physically. It is one of more than 160 Goddard schools using the Children’s Progress Academic Assessment (CPAA) to help ensure that students move on to elementary school well-prepared and ready to learn.

I’m impressed with what we and the children are able to get out of the CPAA. I also love that the reports make it easy for parents to understand how their children are doing. I couldn’t ask for a better, more thought-out program for our prekindergarten classroom… I only wish we had started using it sooner!

Julie Drum-Ryon
Owner

CHALLENGE

“Over the last five years, we’ve seen growing demand for our prekindergarten program,” says Gahanna owner of 11 years, Julie Drum-Ryon. “More than ever, parents are looking for an early childhood program that will have a strong academic focus and will help establish essential school readiness building blocks, including mathematics and literacy.” Upon consulting with Goddard colleagues who are successfully using the CPAA, Drum-Ryon decided to give it a try. While she was already using Goddard’s accredited FLEX curriculum, she was excited to add a measurement component to help supply parents with an objective sense of “where their child is at” academically throughout the year.

SOLUTION

The Gahanna team started using the CPAA in the fall of 2010. The assessment is administered to all prekindergarten students three times a year. Drum-Ryon and Shelly Gies, the prekindergarten teacher both review the reports, act on the data and share results with parents.

“The CPAA has been very informative in helping us ensure that students excel in areas where they may be experiencing challenges,” says Drum-Ryon. She also mentions being impressed with the students’ assessment performance and their ability to follow directions in the computer lab. Both she and Gies have found that the computer-based format is appropriate and engaging for this age group.

Gahanna parents appreciate that their children’s skills are being assessed in a developmentally appropriate, computer-adaptive format in order to help the teacher better address their individual needs. They like learning that the assessment gives their children another opportunity to respond whenever they answer incorrectly and they especially like receiving the regular reports.

Drum-Ryon is committed to offering a wide range of activities to meet the individual needs of each child. Aside from the CPAA, her Pre-K program includes developmentally appropriate handwriting and reading programs and a Chinese language learning component. She is always making sure that there is something new and exciting for the children to learn and discover. Drum-Ryon says, “I’m very hands-on. I’m constantly filtering the programs we offer and trying them myself first. I want to be absolutely certain that they will be valuable for our students. Having tried it, I definitely feel this way about the CPAA.”

IMPACT

Fun for Students, Informative for Educators
Drum-Ryon and Gies, Gahanna’s prekindergarten teacher both find that the CPAA is the right mix of play and academics. The engaging, colorful graphics and friendly prompts make it a stress-free experience for the students. At the same time, the immediate, easy-to-use reports make it a key source of data for informing instruction in the classroom.

Drum-Ryon shares some specific examples of the way in which the Gahanna team has been able to act on the data immediately. When CPAA reports indicated that some students were incorrectly choosing the back cover of a book when asked to identify the front cover, prekindergarten teacher Shelly Gies used that information to add a new phrase at the beginning of her reading circle time. She now reinforces how to distinguish the front and back cover (including by looking for the location of the book binding).

Activity Ideas for Both Teachers and Parents
Not only does the CPAA help identify appropriate activities for the classroom, it also generates activities that parents can use at home. “We often have parents who are interested in finding out what else they can do at home with their children academically and the reports provide some great concrete ideas for them.”