Portage Guide to Early

Education (PGEE)
 Introduction

 A behavioral checklist or curriculum planning device

intended to assess the child’s
 Present behavior,
 Target behavior and
 Suggested techniques to teach each behavior

 Age range : 0-6 years of Mental age.

 Susan Bluma and Colleagues first devised it.
 The behaviors are found in normal children
 Versions

 Three versions so far

 First in 1969,
 Revised in 1976 and
 New Portage Guide in 2003

 Note: we will talk about the revised version

 Objectives

 To assess developmental (functioning) level of the

young children.

 Provide the strategies to teach the unlearned

behaviors to them (Curriculum Development Tool)

 Not intended to find out the development age of the

child.
 Areas it Covers

 Infant Stimulation: How the child responds to its environment

 Socialization: It involves skills of living and interacting with other people

 Self Help Skills: Self care

 Cognitive Skills: Ability to remember, see likeliness and differences,

determine relationship etc

 Language Skills: Systematic pattern of language development

 Motor Skills: Coordinated movement of large and small body muscles

 Note: Each area has number of behaviors to be tested.

 Parts of the Checklist

 Checklist: It lists the behavior on which the child is

to be assessed. The activities in each areas are given
with one year interval i.e. 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5 and 5-
6 years

 Manual: It specifies the rules and regulations of the

administration and scoring procedure of the
mentioned behaviors

 Card Files: It specifies the way to teach the

unlearned behavior of the child
 Using the Checklist

 The six columns indicate:

 Age Level at twelve months interval

 Number of skills that corresponds with the number on the card in the
card file

 List of Behaviors

 Entry Behavior indicates if the behavior is present or absent (the

child should be able to perform the mentioned behavior exactly as
stated without help 3-4 times)
 Using the Checklist

 Date Achieved is meant to record the behavior which was not present
at the entry level.

 Comments column to record any comments about the behavior at the

entry level. For Example

 Not applicable (e.g. fork or napkin use)

 To be achieved (e.g. nobody has seen child doing that activity)
 Using the Card File

 The number of behavior in the Card Column of the checklist

corresponds with the number of the card in the Card File.

 The developmental areas and card number are listed in the

upper left hand corner of each card.

 Several teaching suggestions are given. The ideas are only

teaching suggestions meant to serve as the basis for further
modifications in order to meet the needs of each individual.

 The instructor should read over the suggestions and choose

the one which is most effective for the child.
 Administration

 Administered through an interview with the parents/

teacher or through observation.

 For Normal Children: start one year back from

child’s Chronological Age (CA)

 For Children with Special Needs: start two

years back from the child’s CA
Note: However, it can also be used if suspected that
some behaviors in the child are lacking irrespective
of CA.

 If the child successfully completes the ten

consecutive behaviors, then continue…..otherwise
start backwards from the point where you started
administering the checklist.
 Scoring

 Each behavior present is marked as tick (check

mark)
 Absent behavior is left blank or marked as cross

 Discontinuation:
 On 10-15 consecutive (in a row) failures discontinue
the administration in that area.
 Specifies the areas and behaviors where the
child is lacking and the teacher needs to focus.
 Finding Out Functional Level

 Functional Level (recommended by 1976

Manual):
The age level before which 10-15 consecutive (in a
row) failures occurred is the functional level of the
child for that area.

 Last pass is the Functional level of the child

 Interpreting and Reporting Results

 Quantitative Interpretation: The age range just

before where the 10-15 consecutive failures took
place indicates the functional level of the child.

Rationale: It was administered to assess the child's

present level of functioning.
Example:
The Areas of PGEE and the Functional Level of the
Child in Each Area

Area Functional level

Language 3-4 years
Socialization More than 6 years
Self-help skills 4-5 years
Cognitive 3-4 years
Motor 5-6 years
 Interpreting and Reporting Results

 Qualitative Interpretation:
 Look into the differences between areas, between
different age related activities in the same area.
 The child might not have some prerequisites for one
activity but might be good at others.
 Relate his/her age level in different areas. See the
similarities and differences.
 Result should be reported in terms of functional age
of the child in each area.
Example: The overall discrepancy between the child’s age and age
achieved on the PGEE was found to be 6 years. In the area of
socialization, the child's functional level was more than 5-6 years
old. She smile and greet familiar people like therapist, teacher,
and parents without reminder. She could say please and thank
you, without reminder. She was able to express her feelings by
verbalizing. She could imitates and play with 2-3 children in
cooperative activity. However she did not wait for her turn, did
not ask permission to use belonging and did not apologizes
without being reminded.
Communication wise her functional level was according to
the child of 3-4 years of age. She could refer to self by own name
but could not tell about her age, sex and full name. She was able
to carry a series of two unrelated commands. She could use words
for bathroom needs. She was able to answer where and what's
doing questions.
 Her functioning level with respect to self-help skills
was equivalent to 4-5 years of age. She could feed herself.
She could dress and undress and also button and unbutton
her clothes. She was completely toilet trained and took a
bath on her own. She could put on and take off shoes, but
cannot buckle or unbuckle and lace or tie her shoes. She can
avoid common dangers.
Her cognitive functioning was equivalent to 3-4 years
child. She could point to 5-6 body parts. She could match
like objects including shapes/animals etc. She could draw
horizontal and vertical lines but could not draw V stroke in
imitation. However, she could not copies circle, triangle or
identifies three basic shapes. She could not differentiate
and point to big, long and short objects neither could she
verbally indicate the similar nor the different objects.
 The child was functioning at the age of 5 to 6 years in
the motor area and it was much developed. She could hop
on one foot, jump from height of eight inch and can also
jump forward and backward and could climb up and slides
down. However she could not cut along straight line or
curve. She could not print capital letters, large, single,
anywhere on paper.
Overall, it suggested that the cognitive area of the
child needed much attention.
 Planning Curriculum

 Items are given in a sequence of development

 Items in the checklist are not complete behaviors

 To actually teach the behaviors we need to add

conditions and criteria based on the child’s ability
level and progress.

 To teach the child any behavior, the clinician has to

identify the behavioral objectives
 Behavioral Objective (Task Analysis)

 It states the behavior one attempts to teach the child.

 It must specify an observable and measurable

response

 It has four components i.e. who, will do what, under

what circumstances, to what degree of success
 Components of Task Analysis

 Who (name of the child)

 Will do What (response expected from the child)

 Under what circumstances (how much aid etc)

 To what degree of success (how successfully,

academic 100%, motor 90%)
 Note: Must specify three elements doing task
analysis i.e.

 Terminal goal (ultimate desired behavior)

Example: X will lace his shoe without help (aid) 9/10
times

 Present behavior (pre-requisite for that behavior)

Example: can hold, eye hand coordination, control
of movement

 Target objectives (steps to achieve the goal)

Note:
 avoid using ‘no’ and ‘not’ where possible
 give amount of aid required
 Focus on the area in which there is least
development of the child.

 Learning Pre-requisites (Learning Readiness Skills):

 A (attention)
 C (Compliance)
 E (Eye contact)
 I (Imitation)
 S (Sitting skills)
 Types of Aids

 Verbal (it could be any verbal instructions)

 Visual (presenting something which models the

desired behavior)

 Physical (physically helping the child)

 Methods to Teach

Three basic procedures:

 Chaining (breakdown the complex behavior into
small steps) (steps are dependent)

 Shaping (accepting any response which resembles

the target behavior) (independent steps)

 Fading (gradually removing the amount of help)