Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES PROFILE

Individual Differences Profile Essay Black, Joy Instructor: Dr. Egbert Education 205: Individual Differences (On-Line)

Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES PROFILE

Working with children in a school setting is always a learning experience for a teacher. This is true because every child is different. So the teacher has to learn new ways to adapt the material to meet the needs of all the children in the class. One way to find out how each student learns is to do observation. This observation will help the teacher get a better understanding of what needs to be done to meet each childs needs. I had the chance to go into a classroom and do my own observation on a student. The child I chose is on an IEP, which is a document that specifies the extra help or goal that a child needs to be successful in school. Her IEP is eligible under developmental delay because she is not where she should be in her development. This observation is geared to tell more about the childs development. I will explain about the general characteristics, the physical, the cognitive, and the socio-emotional development of this particular child. After explaining all these aspects of the child I will tie it all together to find a way to help this student in the classroom setting. General Information Lily is a Caucasian female; she is seven years and seven months old. She lives with both her parents. Her parents adopted soon after she was born. She has two sisters, but they are older and do not live in the house. Her daily routines include going to school from 8:20 to 3:15 every day. Her mom walks her to and from school. After school she does her homework with her mom or dad, plays, has dinner, takes a bath, watches a movie, and then goes to bed. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays her after school routine changes a little different because she has to go to her therapies right after school. Physical Development As for Lilys physical development, she has white skin, brown eyes, and naturally curly hair that is just below her shoulders. She has a large forehead and her eyes are spaced further

Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES PROFILE

apart. She has tiny little fingers that are pointed at the fingertips, and she has small teeth. She is slightly smaller than her typical peers but not in abnormal ranges. So while she does have some differences, she does not stand out and seems comparable to her typical peers. She started to wear glasses last year to help her see. She does speech, physical, and occupational therapy to help her gain the developmental skills she needs to help her with her educational and daily living goals. Cognitive Development Lily has been on an IEP since she was three years old. She started in a developmental preschool until she started kindergarten. She is now in 2nd grade. She does direct instruction, which is material that is taught in a more concrete way. She does reading, writing, spelling, and math in resource in this manner for two and half hours a day. The other four and a half hours, she is in a regular education classroom. Academically, she struggles since she is not at grade level, which is why she is in resource. Lilys strengths are for the most part are that she likes to be at school and wants to learn. She works hard when she understands the material. She does try and want to be involved in class activities when she understands the activity or lesson, but has a hard time doing the work in her general education class. It may take a lot of rehearsal or repeating of the same material to get her to learn but eventually she will. Her long term memory is great and once she learns something she will remember it quite well. She also has a good episodic memory, because she can recall events or activities as if they just happened. A lot of her academic success is due to her good memory. She also tries better when she is given positive reinforcers. The more positive the adult is the more receptive she is towards trying her best.

Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES PROFILE

Her weaknesses are that she shuts down when something is too hard and will not even try. She has a hard time following directions; even two-step directions can be challenging to her. She has a very short attention span and is very fidgety. Her motivation and initiative is also very low unless she has someone right next to her cueing or reminding her to do her work and to keep her on task. Her thinking and learning seems consistent of Piagets preoperational stage, because she has a hard time finding the reason why things are done a certain way (Parsons, 2010). She should be a little closer to the concrete operational theory, because of her age she, where she should start to find out the reason for things. Due to her low cognitive development she is a better fit in the preoperational stage. She struggles with most all aspects of school such as, reading and comprehension, mathematics, and writing. Her biggest obstacle is with reading and comprehension. She is in 2nd grade and is just starting to read at the 1st grade level. Word decoding is hard for her. She knows all the sounds the letters make but finds it hard to put the sounds together to form the words. She knows many of the sight words but as for reading, it will be a long process until she can get the sounds to form words. Comprehension of stories is hard also; she needs to have prompting to answer questions about what she heard or tried to read in a story. Socio-Emotional Development Lily has some interactions with some peers, but not that many. I have known this child for many years and she has made some progress. She used to not play with or talk to other kids, and now she will play with some. She is very stubborn and likes things to be her way. When the other kids to not do what, she wants she will not play with them. She likes to play more pretend games, such as pretending to be animals. So other kids often go play elsewhere because they

Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES PROFILE

want to do other things, such as jump rope, swing, or play tether ball. There is usually only one girl who actually plays with her and pretends to be animals with her, and this makes her happy. Her interaction with adults seems good, if she knows the adult. If she doesnt know the person she will not talk to them, ignore their questions, and avoid eye contact. She is very stubborn and hard to break the ice with. It took half a year before she would actually engage with me, when I first met her. She seems to have a low self-concept and self-esteem about herself and her academics. She does not show confidence in her academic work. She is always looking for somebody to give her direction before she does her work because she seems unsure how to do it. For example, when working on her high frequency words, she will not try to sound out or say a word she does not know. She just stops and stares at the adult she is working with to give her the answer. She does not like to be wrong and she does not like the other kids hear her say the wrong thing. She is also a child that wants people to tell her how cute she looks that day and if her belongings are cute. She seems to need the reassurance that she is like the other kids. She also wants to be the center of attention. If another kid is talking, she will interrupt that child to get that attention. This child seems more at stage: 3 of Eriksons model which is Initiative vs. Guilt (Parsons, 2010). She is older than this model age group but she fits in more to this group, because she is still more in the exploring role and unsure of herself. Summary, Conclusions, and Implications This child is low in academics and social skills. She is a happy little girl whom needs lots of direction to stay on task or to get goals accomplished. She is not at the typical level in every area. Generally, she has a typical home; she lives with two parents that love her and take very good care of her. Physically, she is a little low, she does therapy to gain more abilities, but this is a slow process that may happen for quite a while. Cognitively, she is lower; she struggles in

Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES PROFILE

academic and non-academic skills. She processes things slower than normal but when she does understand what she is supposed to be doing, she tries very hard to do well. Her socio-emotional is also low; she takes time to warm up to other children and adults. She can be very stubborn which makes it hard for other children to ask her to play, since she will only play what she wants. However, she is more apt to talk to other children than adults. My findings from this observation is that she should continue getting extra help in the resource room to help her get a better understanding for academics and more confidence in herself to try. She should continue with therapy to help her gain the fine and large motor skills she needs to maintain and develop the different milestones she needs. She may always be lower than typical aged children but eventually she may be closer to them rather than far behind. She really needs to work on not being afraid of trying new things, because if she only does what she knows, there will be negative implications in her academic studies because she will not try. So it seems it is not only the children who come to learn. Teachers themselves have to learn everyday different teaching strategies that will help every student through the many phases of learning. So it is important for teachers to do these observations on students often to find what works and what does not work for their students.

Running head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES PROFILE Reference

Parsons, R.D., Hinson, S.L. & Sardo-Brown, D. (2010). Educational psychology: College of southern Idaho. Belmont, CA: Thompson Learning, Inc.