FAQs for EYE-TA Coordinators & Teachers – earlyyearsevaluation

EYE-TA Teachers

Coordinators

I conducted EYE evaluations last year; can I use my same username and password?

Yes. The username that the EYE team provides you is simply your email address. So, as long your email has not changed, you will be able to log in using this username. As you know, when the EYE team first sent you a password to access the website, you were asked to change it to your own unique password. You may continue to use this same password or, if you wish, change it again. The easiest way to tell if you can use the same password is to check the welcome message sent out when the session is started. If this message contains a six-digit password then you must create a new password upon your first log in. If there is no password in the message you can log in using the same password as you used last year.

How can I best support teachers to be prepared for implementing the EYE-TA in their classroom(s)?

In years 2 and 3, teachers tend to develop effective strategies to assess EYE items during their regular classroom activities. Teachers acquire a great appreciation for the rich, holistic overview the EYE-TA reports provide about their children. In fact, teachers often tell us that they happily embrace the evaluation because they know once they have entered the scores, they will have immediate access to child-level data that will assist them with their educational planning. The data from the EYE-TA provide a complete profile of the strengths and areas for further development for each child and the classroom as a whole and also provides a solid foundation on which to base future planning.

Our school/district implemented the EYE-TA last year, but we have a new teacher starting this year who has never received EYE-TA training. Do you have any training resources available?

We employ a ‘leave behind’ professional development model whereby once an EYE staff member has trained your team, if appropriate, they can then go on to train others in your school/district. We also provide helpful recorded audio PowerPoint’s and support materials that serve as a wonderful complement to training new staff each year. Please visit the materials section of our website and ensure you use the username and password that was provided to you by your Account Success Manager.

The child the teacher is assessing speaks English as an additional language. Should the teacher assess them via the EYE-TA?

Yes, however there are a few important points to be aware of. The assessment is based on teachers’ judgments about children’s acquisition of specific developmental skills. The challenge for teachers assessing children who do not speak English, as their primary language, is that it can be difficult to discern whether a child has acquired a skill, such as being able to count 15 objects or recognize commonly used signs (e.g., stop, restroom, recycling, exit), when the everyday classroom activities are in English. If a child appears to be unable to do a task, the teacher must determine based on their professional judgment, is it because it is being presented in English or is it because the child has not yet acquired the skill in his or her first language? As such, teachers of children learning English as an additional language need to be especially acute observers.

Our recommendation is that for all of the EYE-TA domains, except Language and Communication, judgments about the child’s skills are based on observations in his or her first language. The teacher can model requests for the child or simply observe their interactions in the classroom during play-based or hands-on center activities. For items that the teacher does not feel they have been able to accurately determine the child’s skill level, we would recommend the child not receive a score on that particular item (i.e., indicate ‘exempt’). It is important for the teacher to assess as many domain items as possible such that our system is able to generate a color coded score for the child; however, it should not be at the cost of inaccurately assessing a child’s skill level on a particular item.

For the domain Language and Communication, our recommendation is somewhat different. For this domain the child should be assessed based on their current skills in English. The results may indicate that the child needs additional experiences in this domain (results of “yellow” or “red”) – not that they are necessarily experiencing a developmental delay. As such, the teacher should use caution in interpreting the results. With more exposure/experiences to practice English, the child’s results in the Language and Communication domain will likely improve over time and this growth will be evident in the post EYE-TA assessment results. Please be sure teachers include this information when discussing the child’s results with the families and/or members of the multidisciplinary team.

A new child has recently joined our school/district and the teacher would like to assess them with the EYE-TA. Is there a particular process around this?

Prior to generating reports, teachers always have the option of adding a new child to their class list. They can do this by simply clicking the green Add/Transfer a Child button within our online data entry system and located at the top of the List of Children page. For the Post EYE-TA, if the child has already been evaluated in the Pre EYE-TA session and is simply transferring to a school within the same district, their Responsive Tiered Instruction (RTI) result from the Pre EYE-TA session will appear. If the child is transferring in from a different jurisdiction however, the results are not carried over from the previous session. Please contact your Account Success Manager to discuss the procedure for transferring a child’s EYE-TA results between schools/districts.

How does the EYE-TA take into account the child’s age at the time of assessment?

The EYE-TA individual domain (e.g., Cognitive Skills, Language and Communication) results are not normed by age. Because each child’s specific domain result is not normed by age, the child’s average score is likely to improve over the course of a school year, as children mature and benefit from quality learning opportunities at home and at school. Teachers will likely see evidence of this in the Post EYE-TA results. However, age is taken into account when calculating the child’s RTI learning needs. The RTI model is designed to predict which children may be at risk for later reading difficulties and, based on these results, recommends which children should be reassessed with the Post EYE-TA.

Should teachers be assessing all of the children in their class(es) during the Post EYE-TA?

Not all children will be reassessed in the Post EYE-TA. The list of children for reassessment is based on the RTI prediction model. Only children identified on the Pre EYE-TA with Tier 2 or Tier 3 learning needs are indicated for Post EYE-TA. While every school/district will have their own policies and procedures, it is possible to allow teachers the autonomy to:

a) add children with RTI Tier 1 (green) learning needs to the post EYE-TA assessment group if they feel reassessing the child is beneficial.

b) choose ‘Not Assessed’ under the class list page and specify the reason why. For example, if the teacher feels the child is making sound progress and does not require a Post EYE-TA assessment.

During the Post EYE-TA, should teachers assess the child on all domains or only the ones the child is at risk for?

For those children indicated for Post EYE-TA assessment, all domains of the EYE-TA should be assessed. This will ensure the domain average required for the analysis used to calculate the RTI score is available. It will also provide a Child Report that is complete across all domains for teachers to share in subsequent discussions with families. Assessing a child across all five domains also serves as a way to observe if the child has shown improvement, even slightly. This would be evident by looking at the child’s Pre EYE-TA average session scores in specific domains and comparing the results to the post EYE-TA average session scores. A child with a result of “green” from the Pre EYE-TA session to the Post EYE-TA session can demonstrate improvement. For example, a score of 2.1 in the Pre EYE-TA and a score of 2.9 in the Post EYE-TA shows growth, but the color (green) stays the same. While this formative information may not be as beneficial for the present teacher, the Post EYE-TA results can serve to support a smooth transition between kindergarten and first grade.

Are there any resources I can share with teachers that will help them interpret the Class Report?

Teachers can refer to the Teacher Implementation Guide (TIG) for detailed information on interpreting reports. The Learning Bar has also produced a video that explains how to interpret the Class Report, titled Viewing and interpreting your EYE‐TA Reports. Please visit the materials section of our website to view these and several other helpful support materials.

Are there any best practice suggestions for sharing the Child Reports with families?

It is important that teachers have a solid understanding of the Child Report themselves before they share it with families. Please refer teachers to their TIG which provides detailed information about the report. It is important that families understand that the EYE-TA is an overall development-screening tool and it is not meant to diagnose their child for a particular learning disability. It is also important to take the time to ensure that families understand what the report is telling them. There are a number of resources available on our website that can help teachers to have positive discussions with families about the EYE. We also have a two page family friendly document that provides ideas to easily integrate play-based or hands-on activities to their home lives EYE-TA Fun ways to play with your child to encourage learning. Please visit the materials section of our website to view these and several other helpful support materials.

Teachers

I forgot my password. What should I do?

Please go to the EYE online data entry website and follow the ‘reset password’ instructions:

Go to: https://app.earlyyearsevaluation.com/
Click “Forgot Password?”.
Enter your full email address, and then click the "Submit" button.
Check your email account for the message “EYE: reset password request” and click the link enclosed.
Follow the onscreen instructions to choose a new password, and then click "Submit".
You will see the message: “Your password has been successfully reset. Please click here to login with the new password”. Click the hyperlink "here" and proceed to enter your username and new password.
This should take you to your landing page.

If the reset password instructions do not work, it could be because the email provided to the EYE systems team for your account and the email you are using to reset the password do not match. Please contact eye-support@thelearningbar.com

I conducted Early Years Evaluation (EYE) last year; can I use the same username and password?

Yes. The username that the EYE team provides you is simply your email address. So, as long your email has not changed, you will be able to log in using this username. As you know, when the EYE team first sent you a password to access the website, you were asked to change it to your own unique password. You may continue to use this same password or, if you wish, change it again. The easiest way to tell if you can use the same password is to check the welcome message sent out when the session is started. If this message contains a six-digit password then you must create a new password upon your first login. If there is no password in the message you can log in using the same password as you used last year.

What do I need to begin assessing children with the EYE-TA?

Three important documents are required to effectively assess children with the EYE-TA:

Teacher Implementation Guide (TIG)
Assessment Plates
Teacher Checklist

Prior to beginning the assessments, have printed copies of the above three documents and review the TIG thoroughly. This guide will be very helpful in providing a deeper understanding of the EYE-TA as well as offer many additional tips and suggestions for ease of administration. Review the Teacher Checklist and the accompanying Assessment plates as well. It is essential that teachers familiarize themselves with the EYE-TA items so that they can recognize (and record) skills that often occur naturally in the classroom setting. Teachers will be familiar with many of the assessment items and should ensure they are incorporating the EYE into their existing classroom activities.

Please remember that data can be gathered as the children participate in regular classroom activities and that most items do NOT require a one-to-one direct assessment. There are many teacher support videos and documents that can be found on our website. Please contact your EYE coordinator for more information about how you can access these and other valuable teacher support materials.

How can I best prepare for implementing the EYE-TA in my classroom(s)?

Traditionally teachers were finding the first year of implementing the EYE-TA somewhat challenging as this is often viewed as a new way of collecting information about their children. However, with supportive professional development, access to our resource materials and a clear understanding of how to integrate this tool into existing classroom activities, we find that the task of data collection is often met with teacher excitement coupled with a deeper understanding of the skills/domains being assessed. Teachers will be familiar with many of the assessment items and as such there is not a huge learning curve.

In years 2 and 3, teachers tend to develop effective strategies to assess EYE items during their regular classroom activities. Teachers acquire a great appreciation for the rich, holistic overview the EYE-TA reports provide about their children. In fact, teachers often tell us that they happily embrace the evaluation because they know once they have entered the scores, they will have immediate access to child-level data that will assist them with their educational planning. The data from the EYE-TA provide a complete profile of the strengths and areas for further development for each child and the classroom as a whole and also provides a solid foundation on which to base future planning.

What should I do if the child’s primary language is different from the language of instruction in the classroom?

The assessment is based on teachers’ judgments about children’s acquisition of specific developmental skills. The challenge for teachers assessing children who do not speak English, as their primary language, is that it can be difficult to discern whether a child has acquired a skill, such as being able to count 15 objects or recognize commonly used signs (e.g., stop, washroom, recycling, exit), when the everyday classroom activities are in English. If a child appears to be unable to do a task, the teacher must determine based on their professional judgement, is it because it is being presented in English or is it because the child has not yet acquired the skill in his or her first language? As such, teachers of children learning English as an additional language need to be especially acute observers.

Our recommendation is that for all of the EYE-TA domains, except Language and Communication, judgements about the child’s skills are based on observations in his or her first language. The teacher can model requests for the child or simply observe their interactions in the classroom during play-based or hands-on centre activities. For items that the teacher does not feel they have been able to accurately determine the child’s skill level, we would recommend the child not receive a score on that particular item (i.e., indicate ‘exempt’). It is important for the teacher to assess as many domain items as possible such that our system is able to generate a colour coded score for the child; however, it should not be at the cost of inaccurately assessing a child’s skill level on a particular item.

For the domain Language and Communication, our recommendation is somewhat different. For this domain the child should be assessed based on their current skills in English. The results may indicate that the child needs additional experiences in this domain (results of “yellow” or “red”) – not that they are necessarily experiencing a developmental delay. As such, the teacher should use caution in interpreting the results. With more exposure / experiences to practice English, the child’s results in the Language and Communication domain will likely improve over time and this growth will be evident in the Post EYE-TA assessment results. Please be sure to include this information when discussing the child’s results with the family and/or members of the multidisciplinary team.

I have a child who has a high absentee rate. Should I assess this child?

Assessing a child who is frequently absent poses a challenge. The teacher should attempt to assess as many items as possible while the child is at school; however, for items that cannot be assessed, the teacher should indicate ‘Not Assessed’ on the TA list of children page.

I have finished entering the data and have generated reports. Are there any suggestions for next steps?

The Learning Bar has created a video Viewing and interpreting your EYE-TA Reports. This short video provides a wonderful overview for teachers to get the most out of their EYE-TA class reports. There is also a great resource available entitled Using the Early Years Evaluation Teacher Assessment (EYE-TA) to Support Early Literacy Development by Dr. Joan Beswick. This resource provides valuable background information on literacy development and offers useful suggestions for teachers to help build literacy skills within their classroom. Please contact your EYE coordinator for information about how you can access these and other valuable teacher support materials.

How does the EYE-TA take into account the child’s age at the time of assessment?

The EYE-TA individual domain (e.g., Cognitive Skills, Language and Communication) results are not normed by age. Because each child’s specific domain result is not normed by age, the child’s average score is likely to improve over the course of a school year, as children mature and benefit from quality learning opportunities at home and at school. Teachers will likely see evidence of this in the post EYE-TA assessment results. However, age is taken into account when calculating the child’s Responsive Tiered Instruction (RTI) learning needs. The RTI model is designed to predict which children may be at risk for later reading difficulties and, based on these results, recommends which children should be reassessed with the post EYE-TA.

If I am reassessing a child in the post assessment, do I have to assess the child on all domains or only the one(s) that the child was at risk for?

For those children indicated for Post EYE-TA assessment, all domains of the EYE-TA should be assessed. This will ensure the domain average required for the analysis used to calculate the RTI score is available. It will also provide a Child Report that is complete across all domains for subsequent discussions with families and other team members. Assessing a child across all five domains also serves as a way to observe if the child has shown improvement, even slightly. This would be evident by looking at the child’s Pre EYE-TA session average scores in specific domains and comparing the results to the post EYE-TA session average scores. A child who has a result of “green” from the Pre EYE-TA session to the post session can demonstrate improvement. For example, a score of 2.1 in the Pre EYE-TA and a score of 2.9 in the Post EYE-TA shows growth, but the colour (green) stays the same.

Are there any tips or resources that will help me to interpret the Child Report and Class Report?

The TIG provides valuable information to help interpret the results of the Child and Class Report. We also have a number of resources available in the materials section of our website including the video, Viewing and interpreting your EYE-TA Reports which provides an excellent overview of the EYE-TA Class Report. There is also a great resource available entitled Using the Early Years Evaluation Teacher Assessment (EYE-TA) to Support Early Literacy Development by Dr. Joan Beswick. This resource provides valuable background information on literacy development and offers useful suggestions for teachers to help build literacy skills within their classroom. Please contact your EYE coordinator for information about how you can access these and other valuable teacher support materials.