Physical Development Observation Paper

Introduction While completing my practicum this last semester I observed an seven year old boy named J. J is a second grader in a mixed first and second grade Montessori classroom at Sandhills Primary School. He is smart and excels at science. J is also on the autism spectrum. He is the first born to his twin brother. They are not in the same class due to different academic levels, but they have a very good relationship. In comparison to his twin J seems to be more advanced academically and physically. While Kidwatching J I was able to learn a lot about the way that he thinks and learns. Throughout this paper I will discuss J’s physical, affective, and cognitive development.

Physical Development J appears to be an overall healthy second

He is especially equipped with skills to verbalize his emotions. On multiple occasions throughout this observation J was able to communicate to me that he was frustrated with me or the teacher in a way that we were able to talk through and come to a solution to solve his frustration. (See example September, 3 9:40-10:10 fourth paragraph.) I was also able to see J verbally display his emotions on September, 3 8:30-8:45 when he was telling me that he really liked his classmate D and wanted her to be his girlfriend. In this conversation he was also able to verbalize to me that he understood that he was too young to

“Cognitive development refers to how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of his or her world. Cognitive development is the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision-making, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood.”(Cog.) J is in Jean Piaget’s preoperational stage of development because he is still learning how to conserve. I observed this when I completed my math interview with J. When I showed him two clay balls he agreed that they were the same size, but when I flattened one of the balls he believed they had a different mass because they looked different. He shows some signs of being close to understanding of conservation of numbers. I set up two equally spaced rows of counter and J told me that the two rows were the same. Then I spread out one row to look longer. At first, J said that the longer row contained more counter, but when I asked him how he come to that conclusion he counted each row and realized that they had the same amount. J was able to show me his thought process and solve the problem by applying math skills that he already