Testing of preschoolers by various methods is carried out both in kindergartens and before entering school. Tests for preschoolers help to find out a lot of useful information about the child, which in the future will help to identify deficiencies in education and training; psychological factors that may interfere with the child's normal development; features that you should pay attention to when entering school and further education.
Testing has become mandatory in most educational institutions. The educational process changes all the time, adjustments are made, the educational plan is complicated or simplified, schools are switching to special forms of education. All this requires efforts from the child, the ability to adapt. And parents are not always able to provide their children with qualified assistance in this matter, even if only because they do not know what exactly should be helped. For this, there are tests for preschoolers.
In this article, we will analyze the types of diagnostics that all these tests can tell us about our children, what you should pay special attention to and what tips to heed.
What is the diagnosis of preschool children for?
Diagnosis of preschoolers, methods of various types and orientations are introduced everywhere, starting with admission to kindergarten. They represent a kind of testing. Different methods operate differently, but they have one common property. All of them help parents and teachers to understand the emotional and psychological state of the child, to determine their readiness for school or kindergarten, level of knowledge, quick wit and much more.
For example, some tests may show a particular predisposition of a future student to certain subjects. Then it makes sense to send the child to a specialized school with a focus on foreign languages, mathematics, linguistics, computer science and so on. If testing shows insufficient knowledge and skills, you can always prepare in advance for admission to an educational institution and catch up for any reason.
Testing also helps to understand interpersonal relationships, complexes, problems in the family, various psychological deviations from the norm, find ways to solve the problem and, most importantly, the root cause of the violation.
Below are some particularly popular diagnostic techniques for various target areas.
Psychological readiness for school
Diagnosis of preschoolers, methods of checking readiness for school is a very important point when entering an educational institution. It is noted that all children develop in their own way, with their speed and zeal. Some parents believe that the sooner the child goes to study, the faster and better it will develop. Remembering their own experience, people often regret that they did not go to school earlier for a year or even two, since there is a feeling of wasted time. However, such a statement of the question is not always true. Children may simply not be ready for the schooling process. By the time of admission to school, some qualities should appear, without which study will be difficult enough. For example, perseverance, curiosity, the ability to remember and analyze incoming information.
In order to assess readiness for learning, there is a diagnosis of preschoolers. The techniques are as follows:
- The Kern-Yerasek test is the most extensive test, affecting many aspects of a child’s development.
- "Draw tails for mice" and "Draw handles for umbrellas" - the test helps determine how well the fine motor skills of the hands are developed.
- Interpretation of proverbs - helps to see the development of thinking and the ability to explain phenomena in your own words.
Diagnostics of the cognitive sphere and attention
For the learning process, it is very important to consider the degree of child care . Diagnosis of preschoolers, methods of determining attentiveness are quite widespread and in assortment are widespread in the pedagogical environment. There are a lot of tasks of various contents on this subject, and all of them are effective and indicative.
To determine attentiveness, the following tests are used for children of 5 years: “Find and cross out”, “Correction test”, “Triangles”. In the first test, the child is given a sheet with various geometric shapes drawn on it . For a certain period of time, it is necessary in a special way to cross out figures of a certain type. At the end of the lesson, the total is calculated using the formula:
- S = (0.5N - 2.8n): t, where
S is the final result, that is, the coefficient of perseverance and susceptibility of the child,
N is the number of watched figures,
n is the number of errors
t is the time to complete the work.
With the “Corrective Test” letters are printed on the sheet. The child must cross out three named by the teacher in each line.
The "triangle" requires the preschooler to draw a certain type of this figure on each line. The psychologist fixes errors and the execution time of the work, on the basis of which he then announces the result.
These tests include graphic dictation by cells for preschoolers. The child, under dictation, draws lines and figures arranged in a special way prescribed by the teacher.
Diagnostics of mathematical development
Mathematics for a student is not only a discipline. The developed mathematical mindset allows the child to analyze the incoming information, absorb it much faster, and also put it into practice. Therefore, the diagnosis of preschoolers, the methods of mathematical development of which are an integral part, is necessarily carried out in educational institutions of different levels of training.
Among the game diagnostics, such as "Find the same", "Collect the beads", "Collect the picture" are distinguished. At this stage, it is important to find out how much the child is able to compose the overall picture from different fragments, find the similarity of objects, compare color, size and geometric shapes.
Diagnosis of the emotional sphere of preschoolers: techniques
A stable emotional and psychological state is the key to productive training, quick development in an unfamiliar environment, the ability to fulfill oneself and build social connections. In the process of learning at school or kindergarten, the child acquires not only knowledge about the world around him in the course of studying specific disciplines, but also learns to realize his own personality, its position in society, and to communicate with people (peers and teachers).
Diagnosis of the emotional sphere of preschoolers is quite diverse methods. Their goal is to clarify the child’s self-positioning in the surrounding world and society, as well as finding ways to correct possible complexes and failures. Diagnosis of younger preschoolers is carried out by the following methods:
- Role-playing - the child is invited to accept and play a certain role (animal, family members, inanimate objects, fairy-tale characters).
- Psycho-gymnastic games - in the process of such games, children form the adoption of their own name and character traits, the ability to self-knowledge.
- Communicative games - these games help children learn to verbally expose their attitude to others, express their own opinions and needs, provide support, and contact with the surrounding society.
Intelligence and mental development
Diagnosis of the activities of preschoolers can take place in several ways and tests. Some relate exclusively to the ability to concentrate, others reflect the freedom of imagination and imagination, others show the ability to compare and so on. Diagnostic techniques for senior preschoolers are designed, first of all, to show the child’s readiness to go to school, and also to eliminate the possible shortcomings in the education and understanding of the world in the fastest way. Before graduating from kindergarten, preschool children often conduct the following classes:
- "Sculpture" . This test shows how well developed the child's visual-effective, visual-figurative, verbal-logical types of thinking. The task is that the child is asked to sculpt a sculpture from plasticine in 5-10 minutes. From 0 to 10 points are set for the result:
0-1 - accordingly, if the child could not come up with what he will sculpt, for the time allotted for the task;
2-3 points are awarded for the simplest forms (ball, cube, bar and so on);
4-5 points - a simple craft with a small amount of detail;
6-7 points - an unusual craft, but without much involvement of imagination;
8-9 - the sculpture is original, with a sufficient number of fragments, but not fully worked out;
10 points - all of the above conditions are met. - "Learn the figures . " This technique reflects the development of the type of memory responsible for recognition. This species develops at an early age and is responsible for the further development of the ability to assimilate and store information.
Interpersonal relationships
No personality can be formed in isolation. The social environment is important for a person, and even more so for a small person. In the process of their growth, children are in contact with parents, relatives, peers, older and younger children, teachers, trainers and so on. All these relationships affect the formation of personality and its qualities. The future of the child depends on his society and environment. In order to determine how beneficial social relations are, there are special tests for children 5 years of age and older.
One of the most famous and frequently used is the Bellak Children's Aperceptive Test. With the help of this study, it is possible to identify the leading motives and needs of the child, how the child perceives his parents and relates to them (including in terms of a married couple), features of relationships with other people, identify intrapersonal conflicts, determine the work of protective psychological mechanisms, find out fears, phobias, mental disorders, help cope with their negative consequences.
A. L. Wenger: contribution to the diagnosis of schoolchildren
Leonid Abramovich Wenger is one of the most prominent Russian and Soviet psychologists who have devoted their lives to researching the characteristics of the psychological development of preschool children. Most modern tests somehow refer to the work that A. L. Wenger once conducted. The doctor of sciences has studied the features of the development of perception of the surrounding world and sensory education of young children. Based on these data, he created the first methods for diagnosing the development of preschool children. Based on his research, the Development and Gifted Child programs were created.
These techniques are used everywhere in Russian kindergartens. They consist in teaching children to use and independently create the most diverse schemes, plans, drawings. The result is the formation of specific imaginative thinking.
One of his most used tests is picturesque. Diagnosis of the ability of preschoolers is determined based on the characteristics of the drawings made by them of a person, existing and fictional animals, dynamic images of the family. From the drawings, you can determine whether the worldview of the child matches the actual age, identify social roles and dominant personalities from the environment and in the family, identify serious mental disorders, depression, fears, and so on.
Diagnosis of the development of speech of preschool children
Diagnosis of speech of preschoolers is an important moment for any child, determining his admission to educational institutions and the ability to effectively communicate with the world. How well he will master the ability to verbally express his thoughts and understand speech will depend on how correctly the people around him (including teachers) will understand him, and how much information will be learned from the outside.
If the graphic dictation in the cells for preschoolers reflects how developed the attention and concentration in the child are, then for the diagnosis of oral speech its own methods are required, mainly verbal.
For different age groups, different tests are used, which is quite natural. At various stages of growing up, the child must master all new abilities, the testing bar must be raised in accordance with the requirements for age.
So, for the age group of three to six years old, they use the vocabulary mobility technique. This technique contains about six tasks of different directions and reflects the volume of vocabulary. In addition, it shows how much the child can use familiar vocabulary in everyday life and various situations that require an instant reaction.
For the older age group, more complex tests are used, showing the level of speech development, the productivity of associations, the ability to understand situations based on visual and auditory perception. These tests include the Ebbinghaus technique. The tasks of this testing method include “Insert missing words”, “Place dots and commas”, retelling of a heard fragment of a text, retelling of read material, composing sentences from a given set of words, describing what is happening on dynamic pictures, correlation of various syntactic forms of sentences to pictures reflecting their meaning, and so on.
Professional self-determination
Increasingly, in modern kindergartens and schools conduct testing for vocational guidance at the age of five to eight years. The need for this testing is discussed regularly. Methods have their supporters and, of course, opponents. However, this testing was introduced for a reason.
The modern model of education is trying more and more to make the curriculum compact and highly specialized. Less and less subjects are becoming mandatory, more and more are becoming optional and extracurricular activities. Therefore, professional self-determination at such an early age, according to many specialists in the educational environment, is a reasonable saving of time and money. Specialized tests help to find out especially pronounced aspects of character and mentality, hobbies, habits, classes that bring the most pleasant sensations, and then help to choose a future profession based on the data obtained.
Sometimes a child cannot determine his own interests and desires on his own, in this case such a test can tell him what he can do in his free time, what classes or training sessions to book, what subjects to study with a tutor in additional classes. But limit the preschooler to test results. No matter how the approved educational system changes, development for the formation of an individual requires comprehensive and full-fledged. Such a test can help determine one's life hobbies, but certainly shouldn’t cut down the amount of information required for the harmonious development of a small person.