ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors draw on two stories from the Celebrating Children's Learning webpage to explore the ways in which children's engagement, motivation and thinking can be observed and assessed in effective early years pedagogy. They consider the growing evidence that children's experiences in the early years lay the foundations for how they learn, with far-reaching effects through their school years and beyond. Rather than observation and reflection on how children learn being an afterthought in our assessment practice, we need first and foremost to celebrate and support children as learners through the Characteristics of Effective Learning. Educators often identify objectives or 'next steps' for children based on their assessment of what children know, understand and can do within the curricular areas – and there is evidence that when early years programmes focus on specific content in areas such as literacy or mathematics, children can make rapid progress in these areas.
