preview

Child Observation and Assessment Essay

Good Essays

The child I observed was a seven-year-old girl in Year 2 who sat on the second highest ability table in a mixed class. While not in school, she lived a substantial distance away meaning she travelled to and from school by car and was often the first child to arrive in the morning and the last to leave in the afternoon. I will focus on the social and emotional development of this child who, from now onwards, will be referred to as C.
I carried out two types of observation: these being narrative observation and time sampling. I chose to do both because the strengths of each help to support the weaknesses of the other. The main weaknesses of time sampling are that it causes the observer to miss potentially important behaviours that occur …show more content…

I also feel that, given the opportunity, it would have been of use to carry out an event sampling observation with a focus on any aggressiveness towards others. Throughout the time sampling observation, this was a recurrent behaviour and would, if nothing else, have been interesting to see how often it truly occurred and if there was a regular cause for it. The time sampling I carried out is contained in appendix 1 and the narrative observation in appendix 2.
Harding and Meldon-Smith (1999) and Sharman, Cross and Vennis (2007) provide milestones for children’s emotional development. When comparing these milestones to C’s development, it can be seen that C has only managed to reach about half of the milestones for her age in emotional development and all but a few of those for cognitive development. With regards to emotional development, C displayed a tendency to sulk rather than have an outburst (see appendix 2) and throughout time sampling observation (see appendix 1) was often seen to be watching what was going on around her. However, she failed to show an ability to control her emotions, and did not appear to be developing concepts such as forgiveness and fairness. C also appeared to have failed to reach one particular milestone for

Get Access