Hello everyone,
As many of us know, early intervention is the best intervention. The more knowledge we have about child development and how we can help our children grow, the happier and healthier our children will be. We all want our children to have the best. Sometimes we just need a few more “tools in our tool box”. All of our preschool teachers received training on a well researched and documented assessment that will help you better understand your child’s development and give you some of those tools to help your child continue to grow.
The assessment is called Ages and Stages Questionnaire or ASQ for short. The questionnaire will ask you six questions in each of the following categories: Communication, Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Problem Solving, and Personal/Social. One of the most important things to remember when doing the ASQ is to answer all questions honestly, keeping in mind that the results are intended to help you better understand your child’s development, needs, and strengths.
We are asking all parents to complete this assessment by November 24th. It will take about 20-30 minutes. Some of the questions can be easily answered by you in seconds. Others you will need your child with you to answer. We highly recommend you read through the questions before beginning. We know this may sound time consuming but we promise you, it is worth it. They are very eye opening and will show you just how “on track” your child is in the above five categories.
After completing your child’s ASQ, teachers will be sent all the information and will be able to print and/or email you a summary of your child’s development as well as give you some fun activities for you and your child to do together to help them continue to grow and succeed. Most importantly for you, ASQ will help you identify areas in which your child may need extra support. Studies done with ASQ show that if parents and teachers are able to address children’s needs by this age, they will be more successful students by third grade.
Another important aspect of this questionnaire? It will help teachers see just where their classes as a whole need extra support and they will be able to tailor their lesson plans to meet the needs of their students.
Attached you will find the flyer with detailed information about Help Me Grow (the project through Great Start Collaborative-Wayne that is providing ASQ free of charge to Dearborn Public Schools) as well as the link to the questionnaire. Thank you all very much in advance for participating in this amazing questionnaire!