Valeska Hinton Early Childhood Education Center, Peoria, Illinois

The Valeska Hinton Early Childhood Education Center, in Peoria, Illinois, was designed to involve children, families, and staff in a spirit of community. The school facility is, in fact, designed in four sections, each of which constitutes a "village" for children. (See the Critical Issue "Organizing for Effective Early Childhood Programs and Practices.")

To complement the developmentally appropriate curriculum, the center has adopted the Work Sampling System (Meisels, 1992), a comprehensive assessment system for children in preschool through third grade. The system consists of three components:

• Developmental checklists, arranged by seven domains: personal social development, language and literacy, mathematical thinking, scientific thinking, social studies, art and music, and physical development.

• Portfolios of children's work, including core items (examples of successive work in several domains) collected three or more times a year, and other items determined by teachers.

• Summary reports, written by teachers three times a year based upon their observations and ongoing records.

Studying samples of children's work collected for the portfolios, teachers have worked together on developmental continua in the various domains. Parents are encouraged to keep parallel portfolios of their own observations of their children and examples of work the child do at home. Staff members offer portfolio workshops to help parents develop those collections and interpret their meaning.

References