Running Head: Child Study Project 1

Child Study Project

Name

Institution
Child Study Project 2

Child Study Project

In this project, I used my neighbor’s child; I will use the name Eaglet as a code

name in place of her real name. Eaglet is of the age of eight years and is in third grade.

Eaglet basically performs well in class and more often than not she gets A’s in her

assessment tests. Eaglet is going to be used to study development in the areas of

physical, intellectual, social, creative and language/literacy. This will be a comprehensive

summary of the child’s stage of development.

The first session of the study was centered on testing her creativity in terms of

coming up with a story to write. Eaglet had a bit of a hard time coming up with an idea

for writing the short story; she seemed to be aware of the concept of creating new ideas.

After a bit of probing, I found out that in the classroom her and her fellow pupils are

provided with topics and categories to write on.

However, Eaglet was able to write a story and after reviewing the sample writing,

I came to the conclusion that she was not able to easily create a story from scratch and

making all the parts come together. The short story was descriptive and not well thought

through. From further examination of the story, Eaglet is conversant with punctuation,

capitalization and other grammar items. Eaglet should continue practicing her creative

writing skills; improve her spelling, clarity and direction of her story lines. She also needs

to improve her vocabulary in regards to her writing and get clarity on what goal she has

when writing a story.

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Conclusions on the session concerned with child’s development in the areas of

creativity and literacy, my observations were that; Eaglet is developing well, but the

process seems to be structured in a sense that creative development has not been let to

grow naturally by subtle suggestions by her tutor, rather her creativity is directional

through suggestion of topics and categories on which to write about.

Session two looked into the cognitive part and literacy. Eaglet was fully engaged

in the reading session, she is able to go through sentences again to make sure she

understands what information is being relayed from the texts provided. She was also able

to notice a mistake and correct the mistakes in the texts, when coming across words that

are not familiar, she was able to sound them out and sometimes was even able to

substitute the unfamiliar words with their synonyms. Eaglet from my analysis is a fluent

reader, and has an understanding of the information in which she is reading. From the

questioning, she had pointed out that reading is boring and did not like it very much.

However, from our exercise, which was less informal from the classroom

environment, it became clear that she was excited about reading and the text she preferred

were story texts. This shows that classroom reading appears to her as just a way of

acquiring learning information, this is caused by the fact that a typical day in class

consists of reading textbooks. Eaglet was also able to draw images that were relevant to

what she was reading and showed a high development in her cognitive skills.

From the above observation it is fair to conclude that Eaglet does not find

satisfaction in reading in class. She does not connect what she is reading with the real
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world, which is part of enhancing and developing a child’s imagination and increasing

her cognitive skills.

Conclusions following the observation are; Eaglets confidence in reading should

be increased, she should be exposed to more creative reading rather than textbook reading

in class. Her reading and writing curriculum should be one that she will get satisfaction

from, read books that she enjoys. Ones that she has chosen herself and write stories that

she has also chosen herself. She should get access to reading material that is interesting to

her and this will reduce the attitude of dread she has towards writing and reading. This

will increase her confidence in this area of development, mainly; cognitive, literacy and

creative development.

Eaglet from a social perspective is not shy and from my observations in the

question and answer sessions, she was able to engage with me confidently and even

discuss her relationship in school.

Through my engagement with Eaglet, I have recommendations that I will

implement in my teaching. I will come up with a curriculum that encompasses the

children’s diverse abilities to read and write, the curriculum will focus on every child’s

needs. The curriculum will integrate reading times which will include; group reading,

read aloud time, writing workshops, lessons that address individual needs. The children

will be provided with access to the library so as to choose the books that will interest

them. I will do away with books used for leveling the children’s skills, as this makes the

struggling children feel left out and create a sense o low expectation.
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I will place the pupils in writing and reading groups that will not be determined by

ability, but will be used to improve social skills and interdependency of the children.

They will be allowed to choose reading and writing material that is of interest to them

and will discuss it among them as they do the exercises provided.

References

 "Child Developmental Milestones by Age". Gold Learners. Gold Learners. Pdf.

Retreived on 04-28-2018

Doherty, J. and Hughes, M. (2009) Child development theory and practice 0-11.

Essex: Pearson. 

Hobart, C. Frankel, J. and Walker, M. (2009). A practical guide to child

observation and assessment. (4th Edition.) Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes Publishers

Sharman, C. Cross, W. and Vennis, D. (2004) Observing children: a practical

guide. London: Continuum.

Trawick-Smith, J (2013) Early childhood development: a multicultural

perspective. (6th Edition) USA: Pearson.

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