This week I began doing the note taking for the 2nd observation assignment having to do with language and social/emotional development using running records and frequency checklists. It was a little difficult finding the same child, or children, to produce the conversations for each of the questions on the assignment; but it was great fun. I was amazed at some of the complex language being used by quite a few of the children. Using a past continuous sentence as she emerged from the space between the sofa and the wall Grace declared, “I was squeezing through here!” And then later, while in the block area with some other children, she said, “I think we should build a tall tower!” which demonstrated her meeting the developmental norm for 5-year olds of being able to express future events (or wishes for them to happen?).
Then there was Jonathan whose language production was much less developed. He used lots of repetitive speech: “Goo goo caca, goo goo caca,” he said to a group of children sitting around the snack table. He and Zoey are among the youngest children in the class, yet Zoey’s language is more developmentally advanced and is closer to language production norms for 4, or even 5-year-olds when you consider her use of prepositions and pronouns as well as the overall complexity of her utterances, yet she has just turned 3. “Yesterday I was playing with that;” she told her playmates in the dramatic play area.
The frequency counts weren’t as difficult, but I still couldn’t find evidence of all 6 of the children on my list doing either “good stuff” or “bad stuff.” In fact I’m looking now at my list and 3 kids have no check. Hum. There are 2 children that have several checks in the “antisocial behaviors” column and one child with only one check for being a good helper to her friend during block play.
This blog entry is getting too long, and I still haven’t talked about a specific activity or a follow-up activity. I’ll do that later.
Hey Jim,
ReplyDeleteI thought this week's observation was very fun and interesting looking at it from a psychological perspective while still trying to be objective. It was amazing to hear the stories told by the children and how they interacted with one another. It's interesting that you had students with no check marks in either category. The children I encountered which were younger than the ones you observed had several tally marks in every category. I can say that children these days definitely don't have a problem expressing themselves. lol
You know Jim,
ReplyDeleteI was having the same problem. It was very difficult and I am not 100% sure that it will be complete because like you said, it "was a little difficult finding the same child, or children, to produce the conversations for each of the questions on the assignment."
Jim I wanted to ask, are you sure you are supposed to put the child's first name? Cause another student in our class had to go back and put child 1 and child 2 and remove the names. You should make sure. But if its okay to leave them then disregard lol.
I was also shocked at how expressive and large of a vocabulary that some of the children possess. One of the children I'm observing told another child "you shouldn't do that, that's why we are playing under here and you can't come in." First thing I thought was at least the child is telling him why he don't want him to play with them. These children are 3 years old. They are just so expressive.
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