Assessment: Anecdotal Notes & Child Observation Record (COR Advantage)

I can't claim that I know everything about COR Advantage (Child Observation Record), but I give you some insight. Based on my education, I was shown various ways to assess young children, which included anecdotal notes. It really paid off that we were forced to practice, practice, and practice how to do these appropriately (shout out to EMU ECE Teachers!). Of course, there are some differences between taking anecdotal notes and taking anecdotal notes for COR [that I have experienced]. Let's break this down a little bit...

What are anecdotal notes?
These are short concise notes taken by you when you are observing young children; it is the record of something a child has done. These are factual (objective and without interpretation), and include listed background information for context.

What is the contextual information included?
If you are doing regular anecdotal notes appropriately, then you should include some things (hopefully I haven't forgotten anything ;)): child's name, child's age (year:months), date, time, location in the room, background description of the activity, the anecdotal note.

What is an example of an anecdotal note?
Child's name: Rose
Child's age: 4:3
Date: 2/16/16
Time: 10:25 a.m. - 10:27 a.m.
Location: The house area
Background Description: Rose and eight other children sat at the table for lunch. The teacher sat at a smaller red table next to them as they all ate lunch. 
Note: Rose looked at the teacher sitting at a small red table and said "Look! The teacher is too big for the table guys!" She began to laugh. The teacher replied, "It's actually the same height as your table." Rose replied back, "This one (pointing to the table she is sitting at) is just longer."

What are Key Developmental Indicators?
The High Scope Curriculum has "Key Developmental Indicators," which is High Scope's way of saying what a developmental milestone or goal is. The KDIs are apart of their curriculum content.
More information: Key Developmental Indicators

What is COR Advantage?
COR stands for Child Observation Record and it is a type of assessment that was made to go along with the High Scope Curriculum, but it is not exclusive to it. The age ranges for this tool goes from infancy to kindergarten. The COR content areas correlate exactly with the content areas for the KDIs, but are not exactly the same within the break down of each area. There are eight areas, plus an additional English Language Learning area added if you have ELL children (not included in the KDIs). The other eight areas are: Approaches to Learning, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development and Health, [Language, Literacy, and Communication], Mathematics, Creative Arts, Science ad Technology, and Social Studies. Within the breakdown of each content area in COR is the scoring system to this assessment; it ranges from 0 to 7, with the increasing number representing the increase of complexity. Each score represents a specific key concept that the child might meet and usually ranges near their age (i.e. a 4 year child might have scores between 3 and 5 in areas), but this is not always true.

How do you score a child with COR Advantage?
First, make sure you get your hands onto a COR scoring guide ("desk reference"), which lists the content areas, each areas breakdown of key concepts and the score beside it. This is when you start taking anecdotal notes of each child throughout your daily schedule and becoming familiar with each key concept near the child's age (a good starting point). Once you take notes, you can compare where the child is at developmentally [according the High Scope ;)].
Example:
Note: During work time at the art area, Rose used her tripod grasp to write her first name on the painting she made, and then put it on the drying rack. She said "I painted my mommy." The picture had a circle for a body and head, two eyes, two arms, and two legs.
Score: R. Writing 3 - Child writes discrete letter-like forms.
           J. Fine-Motor Skills 5 - Child uses a tripod grasp to write or draw a letter.
           X. Art 4 - Child makes simple representations with a few details.
You can see that the scores vary for the child and in my head, I made up a note that would be for our four year old make-believe Rose. What is nice is that you can use one note and have multiple scores for it. The goal is to complete one note for each content area for every child; yes that is a lot!!

Where do you score it at?
Well, I have no idea how everyone else's program is or if it is included when you purchase the COR Advantage assessment system, but I do all of my scoring online. I take my notes by writing them down and use the desk reference of the scoring guide to help me see what key concepts I should be looking for throughout the day. I usually put the notes in during nap time and I have done them at home before as well. I have a login for COR Advantage, given to me by my director. At the start of the year, you will need to add in every child to your login page. To add your notes, once you log in, click the child you want to add the notes in for and then click the "Anecdotes" tab. From there you can enter them by clicking on the tab or looking at every note you have entered already by clicking on the "Manage" tab. There are also a lot of other neat tools on this webpage; it can generate different types of reports, progress and score trackers, as well as lesson plans and you are able to invite their families to see the notes you put in (not the scores).

What is the difference between regular anecdotal notes and COR notes?
 Both of my anecdotal note examples above are two examples of the difference between regular anecdotal notes and the way COR notes should be. As you can see, the regular anecdotal notes are more detailed and give a better context to what is going on and who the child is. Two questions above, you can see my example of a COR note; you briefly list the area and general time, but there are no details about a descriptive context, age or time. When you enter the note online, it gives a date, but that is it. COR notes are much more simpler and help to have a faster input, but the regular anecdotal notes are more detailed and defined. While generally, the person who just uses regular anecdotal notes probably uses other ways to document and doesn't have a deadline to input 34-36 notes per child multiple times a year.

Overall, it is important to have assessment in your classroom, whether you are using a planned scoring system or doing your own documentation. It is important that you are able to truly assess your children's development and able to speak to it as well.  I like COR because it helps with showing me where they are higher or lower developmentally and that can help me plan more effectively for each child. On the flip side, some of the key concepts seem out of order or are not connected in a step-fashion. Either way, once you get to know the children in your classroom, then you can see where they do need help. and assessment guides the way.