Child Study 1

Childs Name: B.A. Teacher’s Name: L.N.

Age: 6 Grade: 1st Learning Need: None

Background

B.A. is in first grade at Franklin Elementary School. He lives in Keene, NH

with his parents and his younger sister who is three years old. He is six years old

and was born on September 21, 2007. He does not have any diagnosed or expected

learning needs at this time. B.A. has a very reserved personality. He is usually very

reserved. By that I mean that when we are all in the classroom, he typically talks to

only the teachers. I do not often see him socializing or talking with other students in

the classroom. If he does talk with students in class, it is usually during snack time

and he will talk briefly with the other students that are sitting at his table.

There are two types of formal assessment used at Franklin. The first one is

AIMS Web. This test uses Curriculum Based Measurement in order to measure

student’s academic progress. The students in my class were given the one-minute

test and B.A. received a Reading-Curriculum Based Measurement score of ten.

Teachers take the average of how many words the student correctly said and the

average of how many words they said incorrectly or how many errors they made.

They use these two averages to determine the student’s final score. In this case,

since it was only a one-minute test, I think that a score of ten is very good. The other

type of formal testing that is used is MAP testing. This is a type of standardized test.

It is a computer-based test that each student takes at certain times during the school

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year. MAP is the measure of academic progress. This test helps teachers to

understand each student’s academic level. On this test, B.A.’s score were considered

invalid because when he began the test, his headphones were not working so he

could not hear what the computer was telling him to do so he just clicked and made

guesses. It was not until about half way through the test that a teacher figured out

that his headphones were not working.

Physical Development

Copple and Bredekamp write “At this age, children have improved use of all

their different body parts, which allows for better fine motor skills, and they are

more aware of their body positions and movements” (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009:

260-61). B.A. is greatly improving when it comes to gross motor as well as fine

motor development. He is very active during physical education. He gets very

involved with whatever activity or new movement the teacher is showing the

children. For example, the day that I observed the children’s physical education

class, the children were learning about how to throw a ball overhand. The teacher

had the children practice by throwing a ball overhand at a wall. While some of the

children just threw the ball without really even trying to practice the exercise, B.A.

was standing the way that he was supposed and really practicing his overhand

throw. That showed me that he really cared about what he was doing and that he

really wanted to get better.

“Younger primary grade children still have a fairly slow reaction time, but

their reaction time and accuracy improve over these years, allowing them to become

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more competent at skills such as throwing and catching a ball, which should be at a

mature phase by age 7” (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009: 262). At recess, I have

observed B.A. doing a great deal of different gross motor activities. The majority of

the time, he runs. He plays games that involve a lot of running, such as tag, or

chasing the friends that he is playing with around the playground.

As for fine motor development, B.A. is visibly improving his skills with

holding pencils as well as other writing implements. “During the primary grades,

children practice and refine their fine motor development, and they become more

capable of doing fine motor work without the neurological fatigue that younger

children often experience” (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009: 262). Since the beginning of

the school year, B.A. has improved the way that he holds his pencil when writing his

name or doing other writing work and the results are dramatically better. I have

noticed that when he is rushing or working to quickly to get something done, he will

not hold his pencil the right way and his writing will end up not being as well

written as it could be if he was taking his time.

B.A. does not get school breakfast so he probably eats breakfast at home with

his parents and his sister before he comes to school. He orders a school snack and a

school lunch everyday. He is very good about eating his snacks too. He does eat

pretty much everything that he is given. However, he does not drink milk. I am not

sure what he drinks at home if he does not drink milk. At school he drinks juice

instead of drinking milk.

Cognitive Development

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Wood states the growth patterns for cognitive development at the age of six

years old include becoming increasingly interested in computers and enjoying

reading and writing. Both of these patterns have become apparent to me while

observing B.A. over the course of this semester. He loves going to the computer lab

for technology class. He is usually the first one done the work assignment. I think

this is because he really does understand what he is doing and he also enjoys it. He

seems to be very interested in computers and is always very interested in what is

going on when he is on the computer doing his work (Wood, 2007).

Also, he really does enjoy reading and writing in class as well. Usually when

work is assigned to children in class like workbook pages or things like that, they

are to read three books once they are done their work. B.A. is usually one of the firs

to be done his work and I notice that he gets very excited once his work is corrected

and he is then able to go and read three books. I have watched him while he is

reading and he actually does try to read all of the words and will sometimes come

and ask me to help read a few words that he does not know. He really likes to

understand the stories instead of just skipping words that he doesn’t know he

comes and asks for help. He also enjoys writing time. I have seen his work and I have

corrected his work. He usually does a very good job and tries his very best and when

I tell him that something is incorrect, he just goes back to his desk and works on

fixing what is wrong instead of getting discouraged like many of the other children

tend to do sometimes.

Wood also states that children “enjoy and learn much from field trips

followed by representational activities such as telling about the trips or using blocks

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to recreate things they saw” (Wood, 2007: 81). B.A. as well as all of the other

children in my class learn a great deal from going on field trips. Getting out of the

classroom and being able to see as well as touch things outside in learn about them

from other people can be very beneficial to the children. For example, we went on a

field trip to an apple farm and I do not think that I have ever seen the children have

more fun than they did that day. The children got to learn about apples and apple

farms from the workers at the farm. I know that the children learned a great deal

from this because when we got back to school the children were able to recount

almost every detail of the day. B.A. talked to me about all of the things that he liked

at the apple farm and told me about much fin he had. We read a story about apples

when we got back to school and B. as well as the other children was able to connect

details of the story to things that they saw and learned about at the apple farm.

Cognitively, while B.A. is very smart, he, as well as many of the other children

tends to have confusion with words that have similar beginnings and ends. For

example, sometimes when reading, he will read the word on as in or the word they

will be read as the. During my math unit, a few of the lessons that I taught consisted

of the children labeling different shapes. Many of the children would mix up shapes

like rhombus and rectangle because of the beginning R sound and they would also

mix up trapezoid and triangle because of the beginning T sound. A good example of

B.s work with labeling shapes is shown in work sample 1. Another interesting

example of B.A.’s cognitive development is seen in work sample 2. During my

science unit, one of the activities that I did with the children consisted of them

cutting out pictures and separating them by which pictures did give off light and

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which ones did not give off light. The objective of this activity was to really think

about each picture and decide which ones do and do not give off light. Work sample

2 really shows how hard B.A. thought about each picture and how well he did with

the activity as a whole.

Language and Literacy Development

“Closely tied to cognitive development are changes in children’s language

and communication capacity. The huge expansion of language development during

the preschool and kindergarten periods is followed by a dramatic transition in the

primary grades – the movement from listening, speaking, and emerging reading

skills to “real” reading and written self-expression” (Copple and Bredekamp, 2009:

281). Children’s reading and writing skills are dramatically changing during the

transition from kindergarten into first grade. In my class specifically, the majority of

the children are still working with the sight words that they learned in kindergarten

because they did not retain them very well while they were in kindergarten.

When it comes to speaking, reading, and writing, B.A.’s skills do very quite a

bit. He does speak very well and uses proper vocabulary. At least in my

conversations with him, he always speaks very clearly and properly when he

speaks. However, when he is writing or reading, his skills are still developing and

may be a little under developed where they should be at the first grade level. He

does write very well with the exception of writing some of his letters backwards.

For example, he will mix up lowercase b’s and d’s. Something interesting though is

that sometimes I will notice that he will write a word that a has a b in it and will

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write the b backwards and once he finishes writing the word, he will notice that it

does not look write and he will notice his mistake and then fix it without having to

have a teacher correct him on it. Another thing that is interesting about B.A’s

literacy development is the trouble that he tends to have when it comes to putting

spaces between his words. When he is writing multiple sentences, he tends to just

write all of his words with no spaces and it can make his work difficult to read. A

good example of this is seen on work sample 3 when he was doing a scarecrow

writing activity.

From what I can tell, B.A. is in an average reading group with a few other

children in the class. He is right in between the very low reading groups and the

advanced reading groups. He can do a very good job while reading as long as he

takes his time. Sometimes if he does misread a word he will try re-reading the word

before a teacher corrects it for him because he realizes that the sentence does not

sound right when he mispronounces a word. For example, if he a reads a sentence

like “They dog barked at the cat”, he will realize that the sentence does not sound

right and he will realize that the word they should be the word “the”. He will then

re-read the sentence using the correct word, and he will do all of this without a

teacher needing to correct him.

Social Development

Social development at the primary grades level is very important and they’re

a great deal of factors that affect it. “ At this age, children are very interested in their

peers’ opinions and abilities, both for social comparison and for the sake of making

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friends” (Copple and Bredekamp, 2009: 265). B.A.’s social development is very

interesting. He is a very social child but what I have noticed is that he is mostly only

social with the girls in our class. During snack time, he will talk to the children that

are sitting at his table, which are mostly girls. During lunch, he sits the girls at one

table while a group of the boys sit at a different table. Also, at recess, he never plays

with the boys on the soccer field or the boys that run around on the playground. He

plays with all of the girls and gets involved in whatever game it is the girls are

playing. The quote stated above made me think about B.A. because I have noticed

that he will not put in an opinion when the girls are talking about they will do at

recess. He just joins in on what they are doing, even if it may not be something that

he wants to do. I think that he does that so he does not upset the girls or cause them

to not want to play with them.

Emotional Development

“A skill central to allowing primary grade children to develop and maintain

relationships with adults and peers is the ability to infer others’ thoughts,

expectations, feelings, and intentions. During the primary grades, they become

increasingly able to consider others’ feelings and perspectives” (Copple and

Bredekamp, 2009: 268). B.A. has a great sense of empathy. He is great when it

comes to acknowledging his own feelings as well as the feelings and emotions of the

other children in the classroom. If he is not feeling well or if he is happy or upset

about something, it is very apparent, mostly because he wears his emotions on his

sleeve and his moods are very apparent. He is also very verbal about how he feels. If

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he is upset or happy about something, he will talk about it to the other children in

the class or he will talk about it to the teachers as well.

Not only does he acknowledge his own feelings very well, he acknowledges

the feelings of the other children in the class as well. He is very sympathetic to

children in the class if they are in a bad mood or upset or sad about something. I

once heard him say to one of the children “It will be okay” when they were sad about

something. He likes to be consoling and sympathetic with other students. However,

he sometimes does not realize that he should not get involved when a child is upset

because they may already be getting help from a teacher and the child who is upset

may feel over whelmed if there are too many people around trying to make him feel

better. He just wants to be helpful but he does not always know when he should not

get involved.

Creative Development

Copple and Bredekamp write “Classroom teachers help children explore and

work with various art and music media and techniques. Teachers convey an open,

adventurous attitude to the arts that encourages children to explore available media

and try new approaches” (Copple and Bredekamp, 2009: 318). B.A. is a very creative

student. He loves to color and draw and do other art activities whenever he can,

such as during choice time in the classroom. While I have not observed the art class

that the students have twice a week, I can only assume that B.A. likes art because it

allows him to express his creativity, which I can clearly tell he has a great deal of.

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B.A. draws and colors as much as he can. He always uses a great variety of

colors instead of just using one or two like I have seen many other children do. He

uses a lot of detail as well. I notice that he does the same thing when he is doing

schoolwork that involves drawing and coloring as well. For example, a lesson that I

did weeks ago was to have the children write about what they knew about the

autumn season and then draw a picture to go along with what they wrote. Instead of

writing about leaves falling off trees or leaves changing colors, B.A. wrote about

Pumpkinfest. It was great to see him write about something that did happen in the

fall but was not so obviously about the fall season. His picture was very detailed as

well. He drew a lot of different pumpkins with different faces and all of them were

colored orange. An example of his work is attached. See work sample 2. It is

interesting to watch how much effort and thought he puts into the work that he

does.

Mathematics and Science Development

Observing B.A.’s mathematics progress over the course of this semester has

been very interesting as well as informative. During my shapes math unit, many of

the children showed that they remembered shapes that they were previously

taught, as well as the new shapes that I taught them during the math unit. B.A. did

show that he knew all of the shapes by being able to see the shapes and label them

in one activity that I did. However, in the activity that is shown in work sample 1

that is also shown under cognitive development, he did still struggle with

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distinguishing between shapes whose names begin with the same letter, such as

triangles and trapezoids.

Science was probably the most interesting part of this semester. I had never

taught science before and the children had not really previously learned about the

topic that I taught so it was interesting to start from the beginning and help them to

develop the background information that will help them later. I was surprised at

how much information about the topic of light many of the children in my class

already knew before I even began teaching them about it. B.A. was one of the first to

raise his hand and give me examples of different types of light when I began

introducing the topic to the children. While he was very good with showing that he

knew examples of light and distinguishing between what objects do and do not give

off light, where he did struggle was with the predictions of what colors would be

made when two colored lights were mixed together. An example of his predictions is

seen in work sample 5.

Goals

Physical:

A goal for B.A. in physical development would be in fine motor development

specifically. Getting him to slow down while he is working and not trying to rush so

much would be a great thing for him to work on. When he works too fast, he ends up

not holding his pencil properly, and then his work does not come out as well as it

would if he took his time and held his pencil the right way. A way to help him with

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this is to make sure that he has enough time to finish his work and to not make him

feel like he needs to hurry in order to get his work done that way he will not rush.

Cognitive:

A goal for B.A. in cognitive development would be for him to better

understanding distinguishing between shapes. While he does know the shapes and

can tell you what they are if you point to one at a time, when it comes to labeling,

that is where his confusion kicks in. He gets confused with the shapes whose names

begin with the same letter or sound. To help him with this, he should do more

activities that include the shapes that have the same beginning letters and sounds

and the activities should include having to label the different. The repetition of this

will help him to recognize what the word that goes with each shape looks like.

Language and Literacy:

For language and literacy development, a goal for B.A. will be for him to stop

mixing up his lowercase b’s and d’s when he is writing. He needs to practice more

with writing words that have b and d in them so he can distinguish between the two

and stop making the mistake of switching the two letters. He should get some extra

writing assignments that consist of writing different words with the letters b and d

in them. A good idea may be to have him write some words that have both b and d in

one word. For example, the words bad, bed, and dab. This way he can see both

letters together. This can help him distinguish between each of the letters.

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Social:

For social development, a goal for B.A. is try and branch out and socialize

with other students; specifically the boys in his class. He is very social with children

in the class, but it is just the girls that he gravitates towards. He needs to branch out

socially and start making friends with boys in the class too as opposed to just always

spending his time with the girls in his class. To do this, maybe group activities could

be done and he could be put into a group with boys in the class and maybe that will

get him to talk with them and spend some time with them. This could help to veer

away from spending so much time with the girls.

Emotional:

B.A. needs to work on not letting things that are going on outside of school

affect his schoolwork. For example, there was a day that he knew he was getting

picked up early from school and he was very excited about it, which is fine, but he

did not focus on any work that day because all he was talking about was how excited

he was that he got to leave school. He needs to work on not allowing himself to be

overcome by what is coming later in the day and he needs to focus more on what is

going on at the moment so his work does not suffer.

Creative:

For creative development, a goal for B.A. is to be more open about what

activities he does, especially during choice time. Everyday for choice, when there are

so many options for the children to choose from, he will always go straight to

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drawing. While he does enjoy being creative with his drawings, he needs to try some

other things and not always go to drawing when there are many other options that

he can choose from. There should be certain days where he is allowed to draw and

certain days where he is not allowed to draw and has to choose a different choice.

This will open him up to the other things that are available so he will not always go

to the same activity everyday.

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