Family Study-Child - Essay Example

Family study-child Watching children grow is always interesting, especially when one considers how they respond to the different prompts from their environment. Researchers have done extensive studies on this subject and have been successful in establishing different milestones that children attain at every age of their growth. This work details observation made on a child aged 4-6 and reports the responses received when asked certain questions related to a reading activity. This activity took place in the evening in the presence of other family members who by then were busy engaged in different activities. The mother was busy preparing supper, the elder brother and sister were handling their homework and the father was watching his favorite television program. BEFORE READING On being asked to provide 2 story books she would wish to be read from, the child brought those she had interacted with previously and found them interesting. When I asked why she chose those particular books, she said she enjoyed the stories contain therein and that they always made her laugh. She recollected how their teacher read them the stories and made them repeat some words that were funny to her. She also reviewed how one of her friends at school found it hard to say some words correctly and mentioned she was better than her in that. In all these questions, the girl showed great ability when it came to answering the simple questions. She answered them simply and in logical manner, expressing her feeling where needed. On asking the exact point where she liked reading the book from, she quickly suggested in their bedroom citing that her elder brother does that for her many times. She also said that her teacher told her how parents read their children stories before they sleep. Considering the answers given it is clear that this girl memory had grown significantly that she could remember most of the things in her past. Such is the case that every happening reminded her of similar experiences or even conversations made earlier and she would recite them in a logical manner. WHILE READING While reading the first story, the girl kept comparing my reading that of her teacher. She particularly insisted on the fact that her teacher always asked them to repeat some parts of the story after her. It is interesting that the girl had a good recollection of the story and would interject my reading from time to time to ask questions on the story, although she already knows the answers. On trying to answer her questions she would refute some of my answers saying it did not reflect what her teacher said and instead tried bringing out her teachers response. Here, it is possible to see how intelligent children are at this age. The case has it that they will weigh the consistency of some argument trying to question the validity of any change to what they previously held. Children at this age are very inquisitive and try to make detailed observation of things done and said ( Accardo, pg 5). Asked if she was ready to read the same stories for me, she readily accepted but showed difficulty in the actual reading. She kept on looking in the open boom trying to recap all she had previously learned from previous readings. She would keep turning the pages of the book, breaking at some point to talk about the pictures in the book. At the end of the first story, I asked her question such as what was the main character doing? Why? Just to test her comprehension of the story. For the first story the child maintained a good recap of the flow and correctly answered the questions with little difficulty. Another significant observation on the girl’s response during the entire reading session is that her attention kept diminishing as time progressed, particularly in the second story. The attention was high in the beginning as the child kept participating by creating facial expression in response to the tone in the story but with time she began losing interest and getting focused on other things. During the reading of the second story the child showed little interest and particularly because the story was considerably unfamiliar and had no pictures like the first one. At the end of the story I also asked her questions to test her comprehension of the story. In this particular story, the child showed little comprehension and struggled much while answering the questions. Asked if she is ready to read the story back to me, the child nodded in disapproval depicting exhaustion and lack of concentration. According to research conducted on attention span of children aged four to six, children attention span is calculated by multiplying his/her age by 4 minutes (Accardo, 9). In this case, the child was five years and so her attention only lasted for about 20 minutes. It is also true that this span varies based on the interest level of the activity or task. The higher the interest on the task or activity (e.g. coloring, video game, etc) the longer the time a child remained attentive, and the lower the preference of the task, the shorter the duration a child remains focused. This was particularly evident as I went through the second story. Having shown great attention in the first 20 minutes for the first story, the second story was much of a struggle as the child kept diverting her attention to other activities. During the entire period of the second story the child kept focusing on the television, forcing me to ask for her attention after every short period. To avoid being held captive to the now boring story, the child developed diversion activities like requesting to visit wash rooms, rubbing her eyes with her hands, claiming to be thirsty. At some point she completely lost the touch with the story and concentrated on the television that by now had been put on. While carrying out this task I was disappointed by the child lose of attention during the entire period of reading the second story. The child kept disturbing and even walked away at some point crying when I tried to pull her back. However, I loved the inquisitiveness that the child displayed throughout the first story. Additionally, I loved her recap of past events and communication. Following my experience with the child, I have learned that young children generally have shorter attention span and mostly do well when alternating tasks which involve sticking to one position and focusing with tasks that entail physical movement (Accardo, pg 19). In this regard, school taking care of small children should keep activities like recess as part of the class daily schedule. Teachers should develop creative approaches that make lessons stimulating and even incorporate movements in the lesson to maintain the child attention. Works Cited Accardo, Pasquale J., and Arnold J. Capute. The Capute Scales: Cognitive Adaptive Test/clinical Linguistic & Auditory Milestone Scale (CAT/CLAMS). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Pub., 2005. Print.   Read More