Week by Week: Plans for Documenting Children's Development (What’s New in Early Childhood)

WEEK BY WEEK: PLANS FOR DOCUMENTING CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT, Fifth Edition, addresses a dilemma facing pre-service and in-service teachers--how to manage detailed, meaningful documentation on their students' development and achievements while attending to the other functions necessary to keep children safe and actively involved in learning. This all-purpose guide provides a concrete, systematic plan for recording each child's development in all developmental areas, incorporating material on observation methods and techniques, principles of child development, and appropriate practice. Technical aspects of various methods of documentation are presented, as are reviews of the efficiency of each method in capturing important information. Real-life examples, practical tips, forms with clear instructions, and step-by-step guidelines for gathering observational information and building a portfolio for each child make the book useful and relevant to teachers in training as well as practicing professionals.

Barbara Ann Nilsen taught in the early childhood classroom, then in the college classroom and online as professor and chair of the Teacher Education and Early Childhood Department at SUNY Broome Community College in Binghamton, New York. She retired in 2006. She was also the grant director of a state-wide online course collaborative and the Early Learning Opportunities federal project for Building Brighter Futures for Broome. The author received her EdD in Early and Middle Childhood from Nova University (now called Nova Southeastern University) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She has been active in local, state, and national early childhood professional development initiatives such as New York State Career Pathways, New York State Children's Program Administrator Infant/Toddler, Family Child Care Credentials, and NAEYC'S Early Childhood Associate Degree Program Accreditation project. She is the co-author, with Virginia Albertalli, of An Introduction to Learning and Teaching: Infants through Sixth Grade, and the author of the Observation and Assessment Professional Enhancement text.