At Dynseo, we believe that assessing learning should never be a simple judgment, but rather a compass. For children aged 6 to 11, a pivotal period in their development, this compass must be particularly precise and kind. It should indicate not only where the student is, but also the paths they can take to move forward. It is in this spirit that we designed our COCO PENSE and COCO BOUGE applications. Far from merely measuring fixed academic knowledge, our approach aims to illuminate the cognitive and motor processes that underlie every success and every difficulty.
Traditional assessment, often based on grades, can sometimes resemble a snapshot taken at a specific moment. It captures a result, but rarely the film of effort, thought strategy, or the child's perseverance. Our goal is to provide you, as teachers, speech therapists, or parents, with the tools to view this film. We wish to transform assessment into a continuous dialogue, a tool for mutual understanding to better support each child on their unique path. This article aims to present the indicators we have developed within COCO to assess the progress of 6-11 year-olds in a nuanced, holistic, and tailored manner.
We are convinced that to understand a child's development, one must observe them from all angles. A student is not just a brain learning to read or count; they are a growing being, where the body, emotions, and thought are intimately linked. That is why our vision of assessment is holistic, integrating both cognitive and motor skills.
The Importance of Longitudinal Tracking
Rather than a one-time test, which can be influenced by fatigue, stress, or simply a "bad day," COCO offers regular and playful tracking. The games, short and engaging, can be used repeatedly. This longitudinal approach allows for the identification of underlying trends. A drop in performance in one session is not alarming; however, a consistent decline over several weeks may be a weak signal that deserves your attention. Conversely, observing gradual progress, even if slow, is a powerful indicator of the effectiveness of your teaching interventions. You are no longer looking at a photo, but a growth curve, much richer in information.
Engagement through Play as a Revealer
One of the greatest biases of formal assessment is performance anxiety. A child who is afraid of making mistakes will not use all their abilities. By anchoring assessment in a playful universe, we seek to free the child from this pressure. When absorbed in a fun challenge, they show us their full potential. The indicators collected in this context are often more reliable, as they reflect their real skills rather than their ability to manage the stress of an exam. Play becomes a window into their true thinking mechanisms.
COCO PENSE: deciphering cognitive mechanisms
COCO PENSE is our tool dedicated to stimulating and assessing essential cognitive functions. Each game is designed to target one or more specific skills, allowing us to collect precise data on the student's strengths and weaknesses. This data is not just simple scores, but clues about how the child thinks.
Memory in All Its Forms
Memory is not a monolithic block. Our games allow us to distinguish and assess several of its components.
- Working memory: This is the ability to hold and manipulate information over a short period. It is crucial for following instructions, performing mental calculations, or understanding a text. In games like "Simon" or sequence memorization, we do not only assess the number of items retained. We observe the speed at which the child responds, the type of errors (do they forget the beginning or the end of the sequence?), and their ability to improve after several attempts.
- Visual-spatial memory: Retaining the location of objects or a path is a fundamental skill. Our activities assess the accuracy and speed with which a child can reconstruct an image or a memory path. Difficulty in this area can impact the spelling of certain words or geometry.
Logic and Reasoning in Action
How does the child solve a problem? This is the question at the heart of our logic games. Whether it involves sorting objects according to several criteria, completing logical sequences, or solving puzzles, we analyze several indicators. The success rate is one piece of information, but the number of attempts needed is another, equally important. A child who succeeds after several tries demonstrates mental flexibility and perseverance. We also look at whether the child develops a strategy over the levels or continues through trial and error, which may indicate planning difficulties.
Attention and Concentration, Pillars of Learning
Without attention, there is no lasting learning. COCO PENSE offers exercises to assess different forms of attention.
- Selective attention: The ability to focus on relevant information while ignoring distractions. Our games may include visual or auditory "distractors." The key indicator is the number of errors made in the presence of these distractors.
- Sustained attention: Maintaining concentration on a longer task. We measure the consistency of performance during the same game. A performance that deteriorates quickly may signal attentional fatigue. The average reaction time and its variability are also valuable indicators.
COCO BOUGE: when body and mind unite
We now know that motor development and cognitive development are closely linked. A child who is comfortable in their body, who has a good sense of space and fine coordination, has a solid foundation for more abstract learning such as writing or reading. COCO BOUGE uses the tablet's camera to offer physical activities that are also cognitive exercises.
Coordination and Gross Motor Skills
This is not about measuring athletic performance, but the child's ability to control their body to achieve a goal. In games where they must touch targets with their hands or feet, we analyze the precision of their movements. Do they hit the target on the first try? Are their movements smooth or jerky? These indicators can be early signs of difficulties in fine motor skills, such as pencil grip.
Body Schema and Laterality
Awareness of one's own body in space is fundamental. Our games require the child to use their right, their left, to move, and to squat. We assess their ability to follow motor instructions. Hesitations, errors in laterality, or difficulties coordinating the upper and lower body are valuable information. A poorly integrated body schema can lead to confusions in reading (letter reversals like 'b' and 'd') or writing.
Qualitative Indicators for Personalized Tracking
The true richness of COCO lies not only in data collection but in the nature of that data. We go beyond the simple "pass/fail" to offer you a qualitative analysis of the student's behavior in relation to the task.
Response Time: An Indicator of Automaticity
A short and consistent response time suggests that a skill is being automated. The child no longer needs to think long, the response has become almost instinctive. This is what we seek for basic skills like letter recognition or addition tables. Conversely, a very long or highly variable response time may indicate that the task requires significant cognitive effort. The child hesitates, searches for the right strategy, which is normal in a learning phase but may also reveal cognitive overload if it persists.
Error Analysis: More than Just a Failure
An error is not a fatality; it is information. Our system is designed to help you understand the nature of errors.
Here is a list of examples of analyzable errors:
- Systematic errors: Does the child always confuse the same sounds? Do they systematically reverse certain letters? This may point towards a hypothesis of a specific disorder (e.g., dyslexia, dyscalculia).
- Inattention errors: Does the child respond too quickly without reading the instruction all the way through? This is information about their impulsivity or attention functions.
- Errors related to complexity: Does the child succeed at simple levels but fail as soon as the task involves more elements? This gives an indication of the limits of their working memory.
Understanding the why of the error is the first step to proposing targeted and effective remediation.
The Key Role of the Teacher: Interpreting Data to Support
Our application is a measuring instrument, but you, teachers, are the conductors. COCO provides you with a detailed score of each student's skills, but it is your pedagogical expertise that will transform this information into concrete and tailored actions. It is a dialogue between technology and humanity.
Identifying Weak Signals and Student Profiles
Through regular tracking, COCO can help you spot student profiles that might go unnoticed in a traditional assessment. A calm and discreet student but who shows very slow response times and significant fatigue on COCO PENSE may deserve special attention. Another, very proficient orally, but who shows difficulties in visual-motor coordination on COCO BOUGE, may encounter obstacles in writing. These "weak signals" are essential for early prevention of learning difficulties, particularly DYS disorders.
Adapting Pedagogy Using Data
The indicators from COCO allow for finer pedagogical differentiation.
- For a student with limited working memory, you can break down instructions or use visual aids.
- For a child showing impulsivity, you can establish rituals to encourage them to take their time before responding.
- For a group of students showing weaknesses in logic, you can organize a specific workshop based on manipulation games.
The application gives you a precise diagnosis so that you can prescribe the most appropriate pedagogical "remedy."
Training to Better Support: The Case of DYS Disorders
Identifying difficulties is one thing; knowing how to respond is another, especially in the face of the complexity of DYS disorders (dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia...). These disorders have specific cognitive manifestations that the indicators from COCO can help highlight. Slow processing, recurrent phonological errors, marked visual-spatial difficulties are all clues.
However, the tool alone is not enough. That is why we have developed training dedicated to primary school teachers: "Identifying and Supporting DYS Disorders in Primary School." This training is the essential complement to using our tools. It provides you with the theoretical and practical keys to:
- Understand the neurocognitive mechanisms behind each DYS disorder.
- Learn to interpret data from tools like COCO to make relevant diagnostic hypotheses.
- Discover and master concrete adaptation strategies and pedagogical adjustments that can be applied in the classroom.
Our training aims to give you the confidence and skills necessary to transform COCO's data into a true lever for inclusion and success for your students with special educational needs. Assessment then becomes the starting point for tailored support.
In conclusion, our approach to assessment with COCO is an invitation to change perspective. It is about moving from an assessment that penalizes to an assessment that enlightens, from a one-time measure to continuous support. By combining the precision of the indicators from COCO PENSE and COCO BOUGE with your pedagogical expertise, possibly enriched by our training on DYS disorders, we offer you the means to build a truly personalized learning path for each child. Our shared ambition is to give every student the compass they need to navigate confidently in the world of knowledge.
The article "Assessing Progress with COCO: Indicators Tailored for 6-11 Year-Olds" highlights the importance of tracking children's cognitive development through specific indicators. For those interested in the impact of cognitive stimulation activities on memories, a related article could be Evocation of Memories. This article explores how games and activities can help strengthen memory and recollections, which is essential for children's development.
