Observations

[Guest]

Just a(nother) quickie . . . . . are people still carrying out longer, narrative type observations in Rec / Nursery???

[AnonyMouse_31752]

I'm in pre-school and kind of. What we do is find what the child is really interested in/working towards and then we build the learning story around this. So we have a starting point and then we extend either through interaction or resources and take a picture and observe and then repeat the process. We also get any extra observations from home. This can be over several weeks or several session in the same week. So it is a longer and more detailed process of learning but not a 'long observation' as such.

 

So I had one child who was interested in water and I observed this carefully took pictures etc... Then spoke to mum who said he loved water at home and gave me details of what he liked to do. I then added bamboo and he began to build a water course and poured water down the bamboo, more and less water and was talking about how fast it went (took pictures and made observation) then I provided some items that he could float/wash down the bamboo in this was a spider and other bugs which he loved again observed etc... and then he was 'flushing' the spider down the bamboo spontaneously signing incy wincy spider. We stopped here for that half term as this was over a period of weeks giving him lots of opportunity to explore each stage and move to the next when he was ready, but the following have term he went on to explore floating and sinking and boats which we record in a similar fashion. basically you then have a series of 4/5 pictures with a short but purposeful observations and links to EYFS/COL's

 

I have waffled but hope that helps

[Guest]

we stopped long written obs last year, mostly. Sometimes we would do them for certain situations i.e. evidence gathering for specialist teaching service

 

but generally we found them not to be helpful.

 

we look well being and involvement, we take photos of interest, we look at possible schemas and we plot from there, my staff learnt far more by observing visually and joining in than sitting with pen and paper

[AnonyMouse_22106]

Im pre-school but no long obs here either - unless there is reason for concern eg behaviour

[AnonyMouse_5970]

Yes same for us. We only do them if there is a need. Otherwise we found we weren't using them for any purpose.