Child Observation

Importance of Observations
“Observation is one of the most important aspect of day-to-day professional practice when working with children of all ages” (Stearns)
Observations are done in everyday life but more based ones are carried out in order to asses a child’s development in order to see how well they are doing in specific areas of development, it can often help practitioners see which parts of their develop that they may be lagging behind in.
“Key functions of observations are that it helps assists practitioner in seeing areas of development where the child may need more support” (Walker)
Observation can be carried out every day without the use of pens or paper, they can easily be done by just watching, seeing what the child is struggling

• Not all the information may be put into the observation.
Checklist
Is used to assess people on a particular day whether it be in a nursery or school setting, and can be used quite often in order to look at their development, assessing their behaviour to see if it is caused by anything or it can cover all areas.
They can be a quick way of presenting a lot of information, as it is a simple tick if the child is able to achieve the task: it can be constantly used in order to continually assess the growing development of the child; results are also easy to read and understand as well as obvious to all those who look at the checklist.
“It is important to remember that if an observer specifically asks a child carry out a task, the way in which the child carries it out will be influenced by the observer’s presences”(Tassoni)
However, it has its disadvantages, as the checklist may not give the whole picture of the chid because they may be ill or having an off day when the observation is taking place; and the skills that the child is achieving may lead to the temptation to tick of something that the child may have already achieved last time.
Graphs, Pie and Bar Chart and