Observing is a skill that a parent, teacher, early interventionist, or someone who is studying infants and toddlers can use to learn more about child development, children’s interests and needs, and how to plan responsively. Many methods are available to observe and document children’s behavior, and observations can be used to support the learning of infants and toddlers in all domains of development—emotional, social, cognitive, communication, and motor. In this week’s discussion, we will practice writing anecdotal notes or running records that help us understand children’s social and emotional development.

Please watch all three of the posted videos. After watching the videos, select one of the videos, and address the two prompts below.

Video 1: 9-month-old Michael Shares his Feelings (Running time: 2:06)

Video 2: Toddlers Sharing, Not Sharing (Running time: 2:04)

Video 3: Both Toddlers Want It “Right Now” (Running time: 2:07)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra5P5xTtcNY (Links to an external site.) 

Prompt 1:

Select one of the three videos and write a running record or anecdotal note about a child’s social or emotional development. (These clips are long, so you do not have to write about the entire clip. If you write about a section of a video, please include the time frame of your observation, for example, “from minute 1:18 to 2:05”.) (Review the video and links in the Week 3 Module for guidelines on observing and recording children’s behaviors. The second and third videos include multiple children, so you will want to identify just one child for your observation. If desired, you can use this Observation Worksheet  (Links to an external site.) for recording your observation.)

Prompt 2:

In the Week 3 Reading – Foundations – Social and Emotional Development  (Links to an external site.)we reviewed eleven Social and Emotional Foundations. How can you correlate what you observed in the video to the Social and Emotional Foundations? What social or emotional skills are also being fostered by the child’s explorations and/or interactions with the environment, adults, or other children in the video? (Select at least one Social-Emotional Foundation that you see demonstrated by the child and explain how you see the child exhibiting behaviors related to the foundation.)