E111 – Supporting Learning in Primary Schools - TMA03
Observing and Assessing children

In accordance to the ethical guidelines written by The British Education Research Association (BERA, 2011), the names of the children and school, where used, have been changed in order to maintain confidentiality and anonymity. KU 1.2/KU 1.5

A pen portrait of the child
For this essay I will be using Aaron, the child I used for my last essay “Including all children”.

Aaron is a six year old boy who has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD).

Aaron is a physically big boy for his age with a matching personality.

He has bright blue eyes with red hair which is often the
Once the objects are in the hoops, Miss X hands torches to all children telling them to place them on the floor in front of them.

Aaron sat back down but did not put his torch down, he’s shinning it on the ceiling, Miss X told him to stop and put the torch down, Aaron sighs and tutts, and complies, extremely slowly.

Miss X picked up each item from the hoops, one at a time asking if it’s in the right hoop. All the children put up their hands to answer saying ‘ooh, ooh I know’, but Aaron shouts out. Miss X said ‘I will only ask people who have their hand up’.

Aaron continues to call out.

Miss X picked the mirror from the red hoop and asks if it’s a light source or light reflector.
Children start asking questions because as she held the mirror, light from a gap in the blinds reflected onto the ceiling.

To explain this, Miss X told each group to get a mirror each and use one torch. She told them to shine the torch onto one mirror and see if they could line up all 6 mirrors to create a chain of reflections.

During this activity, Aaron kept shinning his torch onto the ceiling, into other people’s faces and waving the torch around.
Because of this Miss X took his torch away and took three minutes of golden play from his chart.
Aaron started running around knocking chairs over, shouting ‘it’s not fair, I hate school’.

Unfortunately, at this point Miss X asked that I abandon my observation to help minimise