Aistear Stickers: A Simple Tool for Documenting Aistear

Aistear Stickers were created for Childcare Services as a result of feedback from customers. Assessment is a part of an adult's every day interaction with young children. Adults are constantly making judgements on children's learning and development. The information gathered is then used to further progress the children. The Aistear frameworks states that: 'Assessment is the ongoing process of collecting, documenting, reflecting on, and using information to develop rich portraits of children as learners in order to support and enhance their future learning'.

Good assessment practice benefits children, involves children and makes sense for children. It also involves children's families and uses many different methods. Part of the assessment process is the recording of children's learning - as a mental note, a written note, a comment or story, a video recording or a photograph to name but a few! When an adult is assessing children they are looking for evidence of progress across the four Aistear themes. This includes the children's knowledge and understanding, attitudes and values and their skills and dispositions.

Documenting the gathered information provides the adult with a record of children's learning and development. The record helps to tell the child's learning journey (Aistear) as the adult documents important points including what the child understands, what they can do and how they approach their own learning.

Aistear Stickers : What Are They and What Can They Be Used For?

Writing up and linking Aistear themes, aims and goals can be very time consuming. Aistear Stickers are a great aid for services to document children's Aistear learning in a simple and effective way. There is no need to write out the full sentences of the aims and goals upon every observation. Instead staff members have the Aistear learning aims and goals reference sheet to hand and use the stickers to simply circle the required aim and learning goal before placing it on the children's work. Aistear stickers are a fantastic way to label any of the following children's work as part of assessment and documentation;

• Aistear assessments/Observations
• Artwork
• Photographs
• Learning Journals, stories and scrapbooks

Have the list of Aistear learning aims and goals close to hand at all times and simply circle the appropriate aim and goal on the sticker and attach it to the relevant documentation. To help parents to understand, simply display the Aistear learning themes, aims and goals in the front of the child’s learning journal. The standard set of stickers comes in a pack of 20 sheets that includes 480 stickers in total - 120 stickers for each of the four Aistear Themes. They are also available in Irish. We have bigger packs for services with more classes who need staff to have a batch to hand for their own pods. This includes a double, triple and bumper 6 pack!

Aistear Montessori Observation Sheets

At The Early Years Shop we also have Aistear/Montessori Observation Sheets available to aid with documentation. These sheets are a great help in documenting your observations of each child’s play and exploration with easy-to-use correlations to Aistear Themes and Montessori Learning Areas. Keep these sheets on hand so staff can do quick observations on the fly, and then decide on follow-up activities to help the children lead their own learning. This is the essence of the Aistear Framework. You can purchase the observation sheets for Aistear Only Learning or Aistear and Montessori Learning.