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Lesson Seven
Conducting Classroom Observations
Due no later than 11:59 pm on October 13th
After you have completed this lesson, you will be able to:
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Materials you will need:
- A computer with access to the Internet
- Five students with mild disabilities to gather data from during the semester
- An on-site supervisor
- Overton, T. (1999). Assessment in special education. 3rd edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
How To Proceed:
1. Read the paragraph about running record observations located at the bottom of this section. You can also look in the Overton book if you need additional help or contact me at robin.lock@ttu.edu. Remember the discussion about this topic that was held in EDSP 5301.
2. This week's assignment requires you to record a "running record" of your five selected students.
3. Identify your five students.
4. Clearly identify the behavior of the child and those factors in the situation that affect the behavior.
5. Identify the setting and the time of day.
6. Consider how the child's environment (including other children, adults, and the physical and spatial determinants) affects the behavior of the child.
7. Be alert to both verbal and nonverbal cues given by the child and other's in the environment.
8. Write down the events as they occurs.
9. Preserve the sequence of the episode.
10. Be has objective, accurate, and complete as possible.
11. Describe rather than interpret the child's behavior
12. Record the reactions of others to the child's behavior.
13. Do not allow your interest in specific behavior to keep you from recording general impressions.
14. Remember to observe five students that you will be able to work with during the course of the semester.
15. Each observation should take about 30 minutes for a total of 2 1/2 hours.
16. You will place your five observations in your assessment notebook and upload a statement that says you have completed assignments on your elearning account. Even if you haven't finished, upload information about what you have accomplished this week.
Be sure to write your email address on everything you turn in for class.
17. Participate in the threaded discussion #4 at least three times during the week.
18. Observations will begin as scheduled this week.
Description of Narrative Recordings or Observations
This week's assignment requires you to write a narrative of five children's natural behavior.
There are two basic types of narratives: anecdotal recordings and running records. Narrative recordings are referred to as anecdotal recordings when they include anything that seems noteworthy to the observer.
Anecdotal recordings can be made as you observe a child over a period of time. For example, anecdotal records could note the type of reading errors made by student over a six week period. These anecdotal recordings will be brief and can be listed on note cards or sticky notes and placed in a student file.
Running records describe events as they occur and are usually 2 or 3 paragraphs in length. For example, you may observe the behavior of a student for a period of thirty minutes. Many behaviors may occur during that period of time. Running records provides a method to formulate a rich and comprehensive description of the student.
Copyright, 2006
Robin H. Lock, Ph.D.
Texas Tech University
Students officially enrolled in EDSP 5093 at Texas Tech
University are granted permission to make one printed copy of
this
lesson. All others are expressly prohibited from reproducing any
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without written permission from Texas Tech University.