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This semester I have observed my nine-year-old male subjects physical

development, cognitive development, and socio-emotional development. During this

period of observation, I have observed him at his house alone, in his house around
his family, and at our church, where he is around other children.

He is quite musically inclined for his age, so to observe his physical

development; I came up with a task involving an instrument. I had him come up

with a simple drumbeat and play it consistently. The actual task was for him to
speed up the beat and slow it down when I signaled him to without changing the
beat. Though there were slight delays in his transitions, he shocked me at how well
he went through with the task. He also had great posture with his arms and back
while playing the drumbeat. This task focused on speed and consistency because I
asked him to either slow down or speed up to the same beat. Next, I wanted to
observe his physical development mainly on his legs and feet. Therefore, I
conducted a simple task for him to follow. The task was simply to climb two steps up
and back down a few times. Then I upped the number of steps to three. I noticed
that he did well going up the steps, but going down the steps in a backwards
position slowed him down a bit, also causing him to completely stop and start all
over again. This task focused more on complexity and agility of gross motor skills.

To observe his cognitive development, I set up three different stations: a

jellybean station, a water station (McDevitt, 203), and a word problem station. At
the jellybean station, I observed his ability to distinguish equivalent amounts of
jellybeans in different sized zip lock bags with the prior knowledge of how many
jellybeans were in each. He relied his answer on the size of the bags instead of
thinking about the amounts of jellybeans in each bag. The water station was similar
and was also conducted to observe equivalency in the amounts of water. Again, he
was a bit confused because he relied his answer on the size of the cups of water.
Lastly for observing my subjects cognitive development, I went over a few simple
addition and subtraction word problems. He had a difficult time when I had think
about a problem with both math operations in it, but going over the problem with
actual objects (crayons, in this case) helped him a great deal.

The observation of my subjects socio-emotional development was more

informal than the physical and cognitive ones because I didnt actually set up an
actual task. I observed him without him knowing that I was. At our church, while
around other children his age, I noticed that he takes on the leader role. When a
group of children get into mischief, the blame always traces back to him. I also
noticed that he acts a lot on impulse. After observing him at church, it was really
interesting to observe his socio-emotional behavior at his house. He is the youngest
out of five children, with the oldest sibling being 25 years old. It was quite
astonishing to see his role instantly change from leader to the follower. He wouldnt
get into mischief (teasing his sister or the pets) if any of his older male siblings
wouldnt approve of it. He showed more respect for the male role models in his
home rather than the women. He really showed that he had situated motivation
because his immediate environment [enhanced] motivation to learn particular
things [and] behave in particular ways (McDevitt, 513).

I am always around my subject because he is my little brother-in-law. Ive

observed him more than I thought, even before these portfolios. However, using the
guidelines in Child Development and Education by Teresa McDevitt, observing him
was much more enlightening because I did it with a new insight and a distinct
purpose.













Works Cited
McDevitt, Teresa M., and Jeanne Ellis. Ormrod. Child Development and Education.
Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.