Guest Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 (edited) We are being asked to undertake observations of groups of children at work/play as well as observations of individuals and learning zones. I haven't really got my head around making this work as smoothly as possible as there seems far too much to do anyway! I just wondered if anyone else does them, and, if so, are they in simple narrative format or in some kind of template form? If the latter, would you be prepared to share? It would be great to have a starting point, at least! Edited June 9, 2009 by Guest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunnyday Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 Hi - I didn't want to 'view and run' - but I'm confused (it doesn't take much)!!! Who or what are the observations for .......... to inform group planning perhaps? All of our obs. are 'narrative style' - I might include phrases such as 'great coopreative play with....' etc.etc. This is probably of no help at all - hopefully someone with more than the one working brain cell will be along in a minute. Sunnyday Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inge Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 format will depend on the reason for doing them, we used to do several different ones which were used for planning , assessing the environment, individual assessment of the children including speech and comunication which as where this really came into its own. we did long narative obs of childrne interacting and in play, oftne this led us to change the planning adn perhaps the area or resources. we also had a sheet which was jsut a grid with columns for childs name, obs and asesment, and we filled htese in during goup play for many childrne at once, we found these useful for the learning journeys, often having a photo as well. this we tended to use during small group times, we had a sheet full of speech bubbles surrounding a circle, this we used lots. The centre circle was a brief decription of locaton and activity or what was happening and the date. The others were filled in with childs name and language they used, if an adult prompted or joined in we put this in the area surounding the bubbles, we often used this at circle time or a quiet large group activity, often led by an adult, and often showed up lots of things, hard to explain but when you loked and read themit was all clear.. Parents loved these too as we displayed tham on a wall with a photo of what we were doing at the time..we cut them up after diaplay and put them in childrens individual files with a copy of the picture.. we often had a second person to record as we found you really cannot observe, record and concentrate n the children. sometimes we found group obs took less time nad were easier than lts of little bits form individual children, staff soon became used to using them when doing learning journey.. dont know if that is all making any sense, it is a while since I did them, but we found them useful and I know they still use them.. Inge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inge Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 just ignore my spelling.. seems my spell check not working today.. gone on strike.. Inge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 9, 2009 Share Posted June 9, 2009 Sunnyday - our advisors said we need to do observations of groups of children and not just individuals; little more than that to go on. I was just trying to sound people out before I started. I've often reacted too soon when something like this has been suggested before so I'm trying to get the help of you guys to think it through before I start yet more paperwork in motion. Thought I might just try a few out before the summer holidays. Thanks Inge, that's the sort of thing I'm after. I think we will be using them in a variety of contexts but mainly to monitor the environment and plan for role play etc. I want information from them about the whole group more than the individual child at this stage, although as you say they could easily give lots of that too. My fingers have been dyslexic most of today so don't worry! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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