Dibels - Child Observation
Observation of a Child
The assignment is to observe a child ranging in age from two to six years old completing a language arts activity. The child I observed for this assignment is an almost three year old (34 month) neighborhood girl. I will call her Emily. She lives in a house with both her parents; they are a middle class family. Emily is not in preschool yet, she stays home with her mom, but they regularly attend playgroups and music and gym classes where she gets to interact with other children her age. Emily is very outgoing and very talkative. In my opinion, her speech development is advanced for her age, she passes all the developmental language-related milestones for her age group and a few for the next age group as outlined on page 97 of our textbook (Machado, Jeanne M., 2007. Early Childhood Experiences in Language Arts - Early Literacy, 8th Edition). Also, her speech is very clear. Emily loves books and already recognizes all uppercase letters.
I did the language arts activity on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, at around 10:30 a.m. Emily came to my house, and we played the game on the floor of my family room, only she and I, without her mom.
The game we played is an “ABC Fishing Game”. There are six uppercase magnetic letters – A, C, N, R, S, and T – in an aquarium. We have five game cards; each card has a simple picture of an item on it. Underneath the item, the word/name is written in big, uppercase letters, big enough to put the magnetic letter on it. The items/words on these cards are: ANT, CAR, STAR, CAT, and CAN. The child picks a card and a fishing pole with a magnetic end and starts to catch letters from the aquarium. The purpose of the game is to catch the letters that are needed to write, or build, the appropriate word. If the child catches a letter that is part of that word, he or she will put the magnetic letter on the letter outline on the card, if he or she catches a letter that is not part of
The assignment is to observe a child ranging in age from two to six years old completing a language arts activity. The child I observed for this assignment is an almost three year old (34 month) neighborhood girl. I will call her Emily. She lives in a house with both her parents; they are a middle class family. Emily is not in preschool yet, she stays home with her mom, but they regularly attend playgroups and music and gym classes where she gets to interact with other children her age. Emily is very outgoing and very talkative. In my opinion, her speech development is advanced for her age, she passes all the developmental language-related milestones for her age group and a few for the next age group as outlined on page 97 of our textbook (Machado, Jeanne M., 2007. Early Childhood Experiences in Language Arts - Early Literacy, 8th Edition). Also, her speech is very clear. Emily loves books and already recognizes all uppercase letters.
I did the language arts activity on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, at around 10:30 a.m. Emily came to my house, and we played the game on the floor of my family room, only she and I, without her mom.
The game we played is an “ABC Fishing Game”. There are six uppercase magnetic letters – A, C, N, R, S, and T – in an aquarium. We have five game cards; each card has a simple picture of an item on it. Underneath the item, the word/name is written in big, uppercase letters, big enough to put the magnetic letter on it. The items/words on these cards are: ANT, CAR, STAR, CAT, and CAN. The child picks a card and a fishing pole with a magnetic end and starts to catch letters from the aquarium. The purpose of the game is to catch the letters that are needed to write, or build, the appropriate word. If the child catches a letter that is part of that word, he or she will put the magnetic letter on the letter outline on the card, if he or she catches a letter that is not part of
References: Machado, Jeanne M. (2007). Early Childhood Experiences in Language Arts - Early Literacy. (8th edition). Clifton Park, NY.