Observations When Doing A Focus Activity

[Guest]

Hi all,

Just wanted to know how you all do observations on the children when they are doing a focused activity with you. We find it hard to do both. Do you have a simple tick list. Trying to do the activity with the children and write obs on them is difficult. Such as they can use scissors etc. Any suggestions.

Thank you Dorinda

[Cait]

I scribble notes which I can 'flesh out' later. Or sometime write something up as soon as they've left. I have a little voice recorder which is useful if I'm wanting to record speech. Have you considered setting up a video camera?

[Panders]

I know of one group who use a "second person" to do the observations, so one person works with the children while the other makes notes on what is happening. Of course, you do need to have enough staff in to enable that to happen without problems occuring elsewhere in the setting, but maybe for short bursts it could be managed, other than that we would do as Cait does.