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Water
Colors Early Childhood Center of Spring Lake Michigan |
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Water
Colors ECC uses the E-LAP which provides a
systematic method for observing children functioning
in the birth to 36 month age range. The purpose of this
criterion-referenced assessment is to assist teachers,
clinicians, and parents in assessing individual skill
development in six domains of development: gross motor,
fine motor, cognitive, language, self-help, and social
emotional. The results of the Early LAP can be used
to generate a complete picture of a child's developmental
progress in the six domains so that individualized,
developmentally appropriate activities can be planned
and implemented. This assessment can be used with any
child from birth through six years of age. |
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In
1969, the Chapel Hill Training Outreach Project
was established. The primary focus of the early years
of the organization was to develop methods and materials
for the effective demonstration of high-quality services
to young children with disabilities and their families.
The Learning Accomplishment Profile (LAP) was developed
during this time. This assessment instrument was drawn
from normative-based measures for children birth to
six years old. |
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As
early childhood programs expanded their services
to younger children, including children with more severe
disabilities, a need for a similar instrument designed
specifically for infants and toddlers was indicated
by those working in the field. Subsequent to this request,
the first version of a LAP assessment for infants and
toddlers was developed when in 1974-75 the Director
of the Chapel Hill Training Outreach Project enlisted
the services of Patricia Griffin, who joined the staff
as a research assistant to collect, sequence, and organize
additional developmental data. The resulting product,
the Infant LAP, was designed to facilitate programming
for children with more involved disabilities by parceling
the developmental sequence into smaller steps. |
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In
1978-79, Elayne Glover, assisted by Jodi Preminger,
assumed responsibility for the generation of a new
version of the Learning Accomplishment Profile for
children with typical and atypical development who
were functioning in the birth to three-year-old developmental
range. The result of their work was the current Early
LAP. Additional revisions of the Early LAP were made
in 1988 and1995 to clarify administration procedures,
material requirements for each item, and scoring criteria. |
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| In
1999-2000, a national study was conducted to
examine the reliability and validity of the Early LAP,
which included testing a method to calculate an approximate
developmental age score. Overall, this research found
the Early LAP to be reliable and valid in assessing
the development of young children. (The full technical
report may be obtained from Kaplan Press.) |
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