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Human beings are inherently unique. From eye, skin, and hair color to height, weight, and overall build, no two people are exactly alike. Even identical twins have at least one physical trait that differentiates one from the other.

Just as each person is unique physically, so, too are they in their developmental abilities. Where one infant may smile and begin communicating nonverbally at 6 weeks of age, another might roll over at 10 weeks, then smile for the first time. One baby might not ever crawl, but completely stun their parents by pulling themselves up on a chair leg at 10 months and toddling across the kitchen. One baby might sing themselves the “Happy Birthday song” on their first birthday while another doesn’t start communicating verbally until after their second.

Although early childhood experts have general guidelines for milestones, each child is unique in their own development. That being said, knowing when a baby or young child is truly delayed is often critical to making sure they receive the interventions necessary to get them — and keep them — on track.

Areas of development to screen for:

• Physical development
  • sensory abilities: acuity, discrimination, perception
  • fine motor skills, gross motor skills
• Cognitive development (intellectual abilities)
• Communication development (speech and language)
• Social or emotional development (social skills, emotional control)
• Adaptive development (self-care skills)

Screening for developmental delays gives you a closer look at their overall abilities to determine where additional support may be necessary. The Early Screening Inventory, Third Edition gives you the tools needed to individually screen kids ages 3:0–5:11 in several areas of development. In short, ESI™-3 makes finding the kids that need extra support... easier.

Read the previous articles in this series.

For more information on developmental screening with the ESI-3, visit PearsonAssessments.com/ESI-3.  

 

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The connections for learning, behavior, and health in a child’s brain are the most flexible when they are young, and over time, these connections become harder to change. As with any other skill, the sooner a child receives intervention for developmental delays, the better their outcomes typically are. Developmental screening is the most effective way to identify children who need further evaluation in order to get them the support they need sooner rather than later.

Developmental screening should be used to:

1. Identify children who may be in need of further evaluation
2. Assist teachers in getting to know their students’:
   • Cognition
   • Adaptive skills
   • Language skills
   • Fine and gross motor skills
3. Help prevent severe delays from going unrecognized

Developmental screening should not be used as:

• A means to make a diagnostic decision
• A school entry or readiness test
• An achievement test

A typical developmental screening tool will contain items such as name, color recognition, printing letters, picture recognition, rote counting, and identifying body parts. The Early Screening Inventory, Third Edition (ESI-3) goes beyond these “typical” categories to help attain a deeper understanding of a child’s abilities.

ESI-3:

• Measures visual motor-adaptive skills through block building, copy forms, and visual-sequential memory to help understand how a child can coordinate their visual capacities with their fine motor abilities.
• Connects language and cognition with number concepts rather than just rote counting, and verbal expression rather than just identifying objects.
• Measures verbal reasoning which enables them complete analogies, and auditory-sequential memory which enables them to recall items in a particular sequence.
• Measures gross motor skills through balancing, hopping, and skipping.

Hear about the importance of developmental screening, and the power of the ESI-3 from its author, Dr. Miesels!

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Now that you’ve watched Gloria Maccow’s video answering the five basic questions about early childhood development, you might be wondering how you can identify the children in your care who may need extra support. HeadStart has provided an Early Learning Outcomes Framework (HSELOF) which presents five broad areas of early learning — central domains — which reflect research-based expectations for learning and development. The framework emphasizes the key skills, behaviors, and knowledge that programs must foster in children ages birth to 5 to help them be successful in school and life:

• Cognition
• Language and literacy
• Approaches to learning
• Social and emotional development
• Perception, motor, and physical development

There are some well-known indicators for identifying children who may be at risk or need extra support.

The 10 indicators of risk:

1. Difficulties following directions or routines
2. Clumsy (gross and/or fine motor skills)
3. Difficulties interacting with peers
4. Talked late compared to peers
5. Slow vocabulary growth
6. Extremely restless and easily distracted
7. Poor articulation
8. Difficulty naming known objects quickly
9. Poor phonological awareness skills
10. Poor letter-naming skills/math skills

While some of these are typical of any young child, none should be discounted, and further screening is recommended. Using a tool that aligns with the HeadStart Framework is important to ensure you are measuring a child’s progress against a well-known and respected standard.

Early Screening Inventory, Third Edition (ESI-3) aligns with HeadStart, and can quickly identify where they may need additional support in or outside of the classroom, with reporting that can be shared with parents.

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