The Ounce Scale is an assessment tool that supports early childhood educators in observing, assessing and tracking the development of children between the ages 0 to 3 ½. It provides early education programs with the structure and standards to support a child’s growth in an age-appropriate way.
Caregivers and early educators are able to use the tool to observe a child while caring for them. Observations are easily recorded on a regular basis and used to evaluate a child’s development based on standards that describe the expected development. This helps to understand whether a child is developing as expected or if they need extra support that is tailored to their needs.
How Does The Ounce Scale Work?
As an assessment designed for use with infants and toddlers, The Ounce Scale is organized around six major developmental areas:
- Personal connections – How children show they trust you.
- Feelings about self – How children express who they are.
- Relationships with other children – What children do around other children.
- Understanding and communicating – How children understand and communicate.
- Exploration and problem solving – How children explore and figure things out.
- Movement and coordination – How children move their bodies and use their hands to do things.
How Can The Ounce Scale by Pearson Benefit Early Learning Programs?
The Ounce Scale presents a highly reliable, criterion-driven tool that covers specific age-appropriate developmental standards. The assessment is backed by research and helps early learning programs meet Early Head Start and federal assessment requirements. The Ounce Scale works based on an educator’s observations and takes a natural, whole-child approach to documentation and logging a child’s progress.
The assessment allows early childhood educators to gather information from multiple people and perspectives. This gives caregivers a more well-rounded picture of the child’s development. This information helps to tailor lesson plans and activities to provide instruction that is better quality because it is customized to each child.
Another benefit is that the Ounce Scale helps educate parents so that they can become more involved in decisions about their children. This has a particularly strong impact as it supports early intervention for at-risk kids.
The Ounce Scale In Practice
A 2010 report by the University of Washington found that over 80% of early childhood educators find the Ounce Scale and Work Sampling System to be a user-friendly option to document the development of children in this age range. This is a significant contrast compared to their response for Teaching Strategies Gold, a leading assessment tool in the sector, where less than 25% educators found it easy to use.
HiMama & The Ounce Scale
HiMama has proudly partnered with Pearson Education to make The Ounce Scale available to early learning centers that want to prioritize quality programming and parent engagement, while maintaining efficiency in that process.
Through the integration, early childhood educators will have access to the Developmental Assessment Overview page of The Ounce Scale. This provides a comprehensive view of the skills that a child has completed and how many they need to complete within a particular domain to determine if the child is developing typically.
- Quick view of skill level – “Not Developed” or “Developed as Expected”.
- See all comments about each skill.
- Edit the report to modify any skills or comments.
Educators can also:
- View and edit the start and end date of their assessment.
- Flag the child’s progress.
- Add a comment.
- Navigate to the Developmental Evidence page to see specific domains, skills and indicators that have been added to the child’s profile.
- Determine the skill level of the child.
The option of having assessments within the technology tool is useful for educators to get on the same page as each other and provide each child with cohesive support.
Learn more about how HiMama & The Ounce Scale can support your center today!
