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Log observations to assess student development

[For all Staff] Learn how to assign a progress level or benchmark to learning observations.

Written by Audrey

For brightwheel Premium + Experience Assessments subscribers.

With a Experience Assessments subscription, providers can quickly log observations of student behaviors and assess student progress towards specific developmental milestones and learning frameworks.

This makes it easy to report on and assess student development to track skill gaps, where students are excelling, and their growth over time. Assessing student progress with observations is key to create individualized learning plans for each student to support their development and drive child outcomes.

To know before you log an observation

  • Before you can record observations, you'll need to set up your learning framework in the brightwheel app. With Experience Assessments, you gain access to the Experience Developmental Continuum, a skill framework aligned with all 50 states, Head Start, and NAEYC.

  • You can now log observations while marking Learning activities as complete from a Lesson plan, making it easier to track daily progress and share updates with families. To log a standalone observation, use the childā€™s activity wheel.

Log observations and assign progress levels

Here's how to log an observation in brightwheel and assign a specific developmental benchmark you noticed.

From a Lesson Plan

If you've already created a Lesson Plan and assigned it to rooms, you can assign a progress level to an observation directly from that activity with the pre-selected milestones.

  1. From the mobile app, tap Learning in a room

  2. Select the desired learning activity > Log Activity
    ā€‹šŸ’” If you already completed the learning activity, you'll the option to Log observation instead

  3. Select the student(s) and tap Confirm and observe

  4. Tap + Milestones to select the appropriate progress benchmark(s) observed

  5. Hit Done to add optional custom notes, additional milestones, or make it visible to Staff-only

  6. Tap Add observation to save

From the Activity wheel

If you have not yet created a Lesson Plan or you simply wish to log an observation separate from a Lesson Plan, you can do so as you would any other activity.

See our video tutorial.

  1. From the mobile app, tap Add Activity in a room

  2. Select Observation and the students you are observing

  3. Tap + Milestones to select the appropriate progress benchmark(s) observed

  4. Hit Done to add optional custom notes, additional milestones, or make it visible to Staff-only

  5. Tap Add observation to save

After assessing students, learn how to run progress reports next.
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