Hi all,

I hope someone can help me, I am currently doing my observations for unit 1 of the dpp, and I am struggling to find an aim for them.

My first observation is going to be something to do with fine motor skills/ hand dominance (I just need to find a way to word this!), but I can't think of a second aim.

My next choice would have been something to do with language but the problem is I work in a British school in Spain and all the children in my class are Spanish.

While they are learning English they only speak a few basic words so far and therefore always talk in Spanish. I do speak Spanish but I am by no means bilingual so while I have been translating everything the best I can so far, I know that I am missing chunks between translating and getting it down on paper. Also the children are 2 and 3 years old so they are difficult to understand at times anyway.

The child I have chosen to observe is very sociable so I tried to observe her on her social skills but this still required language. I found that I was concentrating so much on what my target child was saying and doing that I was missing most of what the other children were saying to her, and so when I read it back I pretty much had a one sided conversation which was not accurate and therefore not a suitable observation.

My tutor told me not to use any sociograms or checklist style methods, which would have been ideal given the language barrier so I am a little stuck for ideas.

It is getting closer to my deadline and I am beginning to panic, so if anyone has any ideas they would be much appreciated.

Hope to hear from someone soon,

Kelly27 x

Hi Kelly,
How about looking at her social skills but disregarding language? You could look at who she approaches (adults/children),who she chooses to play with, what with exactly, what her creative play looks like (dressing up, role play, music and movement, making things from available resources, etc). Is she independent and confident to select resources from elsewhere to use creatively? Does she behave and interact differently outside?

Hi Kelly and welcome,
You could do an event sample to assess the childrens social interactions, or record the conversation and play it back in your time. As far as aims go I will have a look at what I did and post back later. I am struggling to get my core unit 2 done by 1st December so I know how you feel

Take care

Thanks guys, help is much appreciated, my tutor told me to "use some imagination!!!" which I think just made me feel worse! x

sorry it has taken me so long to post back, don't get too worried about the wording as you will see from mine I kept it very simple and got a 'B' for this assignment.

Aim – To assess J’s interests in order to produce an individual learning plan
Aim – To observe J’s physical skills in relation to developmental norms, during self chosen activities.

Aim – To observe J’s social interactions within the setting.
Aim – To assess J’s language development

good luck

I have just finished this unit and the issues you are facing will give you alot more to write about when you start the next section (E2 or E3) where you need to write about the reliability of observations as you can talk about what you have talked about above and discuss it within the types of observations you have used so don't feel to down about the issues you are facing, there is also a sub creteria (a-e) where you need to reflect on them so you'll have plenty to write there.

IDK if its any help but my tutor told us what observations to carry out for what skill so we had to do a tracking observatiion for physical, a narrative for social, a Target child observation for language and then we could chose the 4th.
I also did my observations then wrote the aim depending on what i had seen lol I know thats cheating but it made me look abit efficant lol. You can have a look in a few of the observation books and they give you samples of aims.

HTH
Goodluck :-)