I began to set myself goals, such as: reading a book every week, and writing an experience after reading a book; Watch a classic movie every week and write an article after reading it; Write an article every day.
The book I read this week is Observing Children-A Practical Guide (3rd Edition), written by Carol Shaman, Wendy Cross and Diana Winnis in Britain, translated by Shan Minyue and Wang Xiaoping, and published by East China Normal University Press in August 2008.
There is not much introduction to this book and its author on the Internet. Dangdang's introduction to this book is like this:
This book provides workers who take care of babies and young parents with the skills they need to observe children. This is a valuable and practical guide. This book explains why people need to observe children and guides people how to observe children.
Observing children: let you know about children's development, help you judge children's development level, guide you to design children's development goals, and remind you to pay attention to the development needs of extraordinary children. This book is suitable for all those who are interested in children aged 0-8.
This is actually written on the back cover.
Dangdang. The website has received more than 8,000 favorable comments from readers. In the comments, there are many educators, especially kindergarten teachers and parents. Many people say that this book is very practical, which updates their understanding of observation and provides practical methods for observing children.
In fact, this book refers to children's early learning goals, the part about "Early Infant Parenting and Education" in the British National Vocational Qualification Level 3, and the new version of "Early Infant Parenting Rules" (DEYP). In my opinion, it is a very professional observation and operation guide.
My feeling about this book is that it is the most grounded and worthwhile book on observation I have ever read. The reason for this is the following：
1. The positioning is clear and the expression is concise. For example, the first sentence in the preface: This book is suitable for all those who are interested in children aged 0-8. Very simple and direct. The second sentence: our original intention in writing this book is to encourage the workers who take care of infants to observe children and meet their needs by observing and recording their growth; Doing so will also make baby care workers more aware of what they need to learn and improve when planning their future career development.
In a word, why did you write this book? What is the value of observation and what is good for you? At the same time, let readers realize that the author has a very clear value orientation when writing this book.
2. Explain completely from the observer's point of view. This makes me particularly loud when I read. When observing, my biggest confusion is that I don't know what I should observe, or I don't know how to set the observation target and determine the observation object, so I can only observe casually. This will lead to some problems: either paying too much attention to children with special performance and ignoring most children; Or I recorded a lot of clips, but I don't know how to use these records. The end result is "observation for observation".
The author seems to fully understand these problems. So, the author starts with why to observe, and shows you step by step what observation is, how to make records in various ways, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each way. When you know all the methods, the author begins to show you how to think, how to design observation targets and how to choose appropriate observation methods with practical cases. This part shocked me, because all the problems in it are often encountered in our work, and the author can be called hands-on teaching.
Then, how to link observation and evaluation with the early learning goals in the basic stage, and finally introduce various activities to assist curriculum development and promote children's development, as well as milestones in the development of 0-8 years old.
The content and logical structure of the book is the whole process from observation to activity of an observer.
In content description, the author often works as an observer, has a common idea, and is very easy to understand and empathize with. For example, the book tells a story about a 3-year-old and 4-month-old girl who went to kindergarten for the first time and had serious separation anxiety. The teachers suggested coming for three and a half days first. During these three and a half days, the teacher first extracted the girl's behavior pattern through observation: when she first came to school, she would cry for a while, but not for a long time. She will always sit in the nearest place to the teacher, draw a picture or complete a puzzle, nod to answer the teacher's questions, shake her head or point her fingers, watch other children play but have no intention of joining, and don't like noise, so she will directly pull you to express her needs. ...
Based on the above observation, the teacher initially judged the child as "shy" and was not used to getting along with other children, but later found something was wrong. What should I do at this time? The author put forward five questions in succession:
First, what should you do? I suggest you raise your questions at the staff meeting first to see if your colleagues have encountered similar problems. If not, let's take a look first.
Second, what do you mainly care about? In the book, the teacher chose "to know whether the little girl is willing to talk to others and whether she tries to join other children's activities."
Third, how do you intend to understand the problem you want to investigate? For example, observing by sampling, if it is repeatedly confirmed that she does not take the initiative to talk and play with other children, it is necessary to consider whether this is the normal performance of children of this age.
Fourth, how are you going to evaluate her behavior? You can use "development milestones" or refer to professional books in this field to interview parents of children and so on.
Fifth, what should we do next? We can create corresponding activities to help her develop, continue to record her achievements, and make the whole process form a cycle, that is, make observation, evaluation, planning activities and initiating activities form a cycle.
The five questions are actually how to observe the whole process of thinking and action. The case presented by the author made me realize how a complete observation is conducted, how observation and activity are related, and how we should conduct targeted observation.
3. There are various observation methods and specific application methods and situations.
The author divides these methods into four categories, namely, chart method, sampling method, written method and checklist method.
Graphical methods include tracing method (such as tracing and drawing children's activities in class), social graphic method (such as recording the friendship between children in a group), histogram method (such as recording the completion of a task by the whole class) and pie chart method (such as recording the amount of time a child spends on different activities). Pie charts can also have many variations.
Sampling method includes time sampling method for target children and group children, event sampling method often used to observe antisocial behavior tendency, and "snapshot method" for sampling what happened at a certain time in a specific area and a specific time period.
Written observation, also known as written/narrative observation, includes structured observation, unstructured observation, comparative observation, diary and case study.
The most precious thing is that each observation method is equipped with 1-2 complete cases, so that readers can intuitively feel the characteristics, uses and differences of each observation method.
4. A large number of observation cases not only prove evidence, but also broaden our horizons.
There are about dozens of complete observation cases in the book, each case includes observation purpose, objective, environment, observation object, observation content, conclusion, evaluation and so on, so that readers can clearly see what a complete observation case should be like. All kinds of observation cases have opened my eyes. The original observation content can be so rich. For example, tracking and observing children's activity paths and staying time in corner games can effectively find children's behavior preferences; Another example is to observe a premature baby for more than a year, and you will find that there is a gap between the child and the norm at first, and this gap disappears around 1 year.
The most interesting observation is to observe the friendship of the children in the class with social graphics, and we can find out which children are the most popular, which children have no friends, which children generally choose the same sex or the opposite sex as friends, and why some children look very popular, but in fact there are not many friends.
There are also toilet observation, interactive observation, language, sports, science, imagination observation and so on, all-encompassing. The author even listed 37 common observation goals and objectives for readers' reference, which is really thoughtful.
5. Learn some characteristics of British education through books. For example, they divide children's development into five parts: body, intelligence, language, sociality and emotion, which is very beneficial for understanding and observing children. For another example, education in Britain is a multi-system linkage process, and the work of teachers is only a part of it. Related to this are family doctors and health visitors (community-assisted family doctors care for children aged 0-5, and regularly screen their hearing and vision to monitor their regular development), physiotherapists (assess children's motor skills and motor development level), occupational (rehabilitation) therapists (assess children's operational ability), speech therapists (assess children's language development), clinical psychologists (assess children's social and emotional development), and others.
After reading this book, I have a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of observation, and I quite agree with the views on observation in the book:
Why observe children? In order to discover their uniqueness.
What can we see? -what children can do; How they deal with problems and try to solve them; The children had a good time.
What can we learn from observation? -What level they have reached; Better understand why children should do something; Strengthen our understanding of children's development; Look at the problem from the child's point of view.
How can we help them through observation? -Promote these skills development by providing activities, resources or support.
By observing children: We assess their needs, expand their experience and promote their learning.
The golden sentence in the book:
1. Observation should be an "achievement record" and suggestions should be made on how to achieve further achievements. P88
2. Plan+implementation activities+observation+evaluation = action? P9 1