Longitudinal Child Study m3 PDF

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Fa yeGi bbons Longitudinal Child Study- Unit 3- M3 It is essential that we assess children during and after observing them as assessing a child is when you monitor and record a child’s development in order for an overall evaluation to be made about the child’s development relating to their expected milestones. An assessment of a child can only be made when you are observing and making observations on a child. There are five areas that we undertake observations of a child in and they are physical, intellectual, language, social and emotional. Assessments allow us to identify how well a child is developing, whether or not their reaching their expected milestones, what state of their in and whether their behaviour has changed in any way. The reason why children need to be observed regularly is so that they can be assessed in order for their individual needs to be met as some children may slightly behind in their development and so they may not be meeting their developmental milestones. Therefore, assessments enable us to pick up on children who are struggling in their development and this means we can help that child to progress to their expected developmental milestones which they should be at for their age and stage of development. Furthermore, developmental milestones are a set of age specific tasks that most children can do at a certain age range. Milestones are put in place for babies and young children to achieve at particular ages. Although, this doesn’t mean that a child has to achieve these milestones as they are just a guide to see how the child is developing in all of their areas of development. Some children will not always reach all of their expected developmental milestones yet this does not mean that there is a problem with their development because all children develop at different stages. Sometimes children can develop quicker through their developmental milestones although some children can develop slower within their developmental milestones. On the other hand if children are barely meeting any of their developmental milestones then this could reinforce that there is an underlying problem with the child’s development, which may be unknown to the child and the child’s parent/carer. Therefore, milestones enable us to detect any health/developmental problems with children and so hopefully these problems can be treated to help the child to progress near to if not at their expected milestones. Developmental milestones are a good way of helping you to undertake observations on children as they enable you to observe all areas of the child’s development, these areas include physical, intellectual, language, social and emotional development. The reason why developmental milestones allow you to observe children is because you can focus on specific areas and try to identify whether or not the child is competent in undertaking each of the milestones. In addition, stepping stones are fairly familiar to milestones as they enable us to make observations on children and they give us opportunity to monitor children’s’

Fa yeGi bbons development. Stepping stones are used as a different form of analysis when observing young children. Moreover, the early learning goals are the expectations for most young children to reach by the end of the early years foundation stage. The early learning goals consist of the six main areas of young children’s development and learning. The six early learning goals are:      

Personal, Social and emotional development Communication, language and literacy Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy Knowledge and understanding of the world Physical development Creative development

These early learning goals are a great head start for children before they start school and enter reception class at the age of 4 years. These early learning goals can enable early years practitioners or parents of children to identify through observations whether or not their child is hitting these goals and if not then the child may have a learning difficulty, disability and/or a child with additional language needs (which can be sorted out) or they may need extra work to get these goals up to scratch. The early learning goals promote children’s learning at an early stage so that they are prepared for school and they are also a good way of getting children interested in learning straight away as some children are put off from learning if they haven’t done it before. Another benefit of the early learning goals is that they are a way of identifying children who are doing exceptionally well in their development as they are meeting all of these goals easily and so therefore other tasks can be set for them to achieve even further. Finally, recording observations is very important when you observe a child as you need it as evidence to show how well the child is developing, whether or not their reaching their developmental milestones, what state of health their in and how well their behaving. If you do not record all of this information down then you are unlikely to remember it when you go back to review the child. This could then result in you missing out on any health problems the child may have or any behaviour changes they may have been going through etc. Therefore this could mean that the child won’t get the help and support he/she needs to further their development due to the observation being unrecorded and so nobody knows what went on during the observation and so no help can be given....