Week by Week: Plans for Documenting Children’s Development

Barbara Ann Nilsen taught in the early childhood classroom and then in the college classroom and online as professor and chair of the Teacher Education and Early Childhood Department at SUNY Broome Community College in Binghamton, New York. She retired in 2006. In addition, she was the grant director of a statewide online course collaborative and the Early Learning Opportunities federal project for Building Brighter Futures for Broome. Nilsen has been active in local, state and national early childhood professional development initiatives such as New York State Career Pathways, New York State Children's Program Administrator Infant/Toddler, Family Child Care Credentials and NAEYC'S Early Childhood Associate Degree Program Accreditation project. She is the co-author, with Virginia Albertalli, of AN INTRODUCTION TO LEARNING AND TEACHING: INFANTS THROUGH SIXTH GRADE and the author of the OBSERVATION AND ASSESSMENT PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT text. She received her EdD in early and middle childhood from Nova University (now called Nova Southeastern University) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"Week by Week is a documentation system guidebook for students and practitioners in early childhood education who work with infants through second-grade children. Each chapter has two main parts: the documentation method ("Using the Observation Method") and the child development overview ("Looking at Child Development Domain") The purpose is to organize and plan intentionally, week by week, to build a Portfolio for each child, filling it with various pieces of evidence that document the child's development and behavior. Week by Week presents a manageable plan that will help gather documentation on all the children in the class or group, in all the developmental areas"