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re:KAREN给我了小K的学校观摩详细报告，...
KAREN给我了小K的学校观摩详细报告，说实在的，我还是很高兴的！[EM14][EM15]
School Observation
Date of Visit: 05/06/2011
Referral: K is a boy who I have followed over the past several years and also observed in his school and other programs. K’s parents asked me to observe in his classroom to provide input around his social functioning with peers at this time. This will also guide our overall treatment planning for K.
Observation: I observed K in his class for typical children taught by Ms. Swanson.
When I arrived at the school and was waiting at the office, K, who had been eagerly anticipating my visit, came out to greet me, sent by his teacher. He told me that he would show me where his classroom was, and then he asked me if I knew the children, and then he introduced the children to me with Ms. Swanson’s permission. He asked me to “guess who this is,” sitting close to his friend S., who he had told me about yesterday. He and S. beamed and put their arms around each other as they looked up while K introduced S. to me. He introduced all the children and then as he began to lose track of which ones he had introduced he asked the children if they would raise their hands when he said their names. I think this was a strategy to help him keep track of who he had or had not introduced. This was an appropriate and somewhat helpful strategy although he still missed a few, and the teacher then asked who he missed. These two children raised their hands and K then introduced them.
As the children were sitting on the meeting rug in no particular pattern, with some behind K and some of them also moving around, it was fully appropriate that he would have trouble keeping track and would leave a few out, and it was a nice prosocial effort on his part to want to introduce everyone. The children also seemed to enjoy being introduced by K.
The class then moved on to various parts of their morning meeting, including doing some work on phonics, a phonics “fishing” game, singing various songs, etc.
K was a full participant in each of these activities with great enthusiasm. During the singing he and his close friend S. watched each other, smiled and made playful movements throughout, as did some of the other pairs and groups of children. During the academic parts K was more serious, as was appropriate to the situation. When one child was having trouble finding two parts of words to go together, K whispered, “Do you want me to help you?” Then when she had further trouble he pointed out a few options for her. He seemed to be doing this purely to be helpful although he was also quite interested in the activity. It was my impression that he was holding himself back from quickly assembling all of the words as he studied them all, moving his head around to see each word. Towards the end when all the children had had a turn he quickly put the last few together. In general his participation was just like that of the other children, although this task was relatively very easy for him given his high reading ability. Because of the social component, with the turn-taking, waiting, helping each other, etc., he still got a lot out of this activity.
K was able to smoothly shift his affect and activity level, becoming very playful and full of smiles during the music activities, and more serious during the work activities.
When the children were asked to think of two-syllable words, K raised his hand, with a big smile, and when Ms. Swanson called on him, K said “Swanson!” He, the class and everyone laughed, as this was of course his teacher’s name, and she commented, “You're just trying to butter me up!” in a similarly playful fashion and K smiled back and looked to me smiling.
I saw several times that K is now greatly enjoying making jokes, and for the most part his jokes are on target. He did make one joke during the spelling test, which was not a time for jokes, but he did this in a way that did not disrupt the test. Specifically, one of the words was “mister” in the abbreviated form, and K raised his hand and Ms. Swanson called on him and he said, “Like Mr. Swanson” and smiled, and the children laughed. Even though this was a serious spelling test, the children were making playful comments and hence this was again quite appropriate to the overall playful nature of the class.
Throughout the rest of the spelling test K was quite serious, wrote his words, etc. Again this is a quite easy activity for him as his writing is advanced, but he is learning other skills during these academic times. For instance, the child sitting next to him was clearly having some difficulties with some of the words, and K watched her and noticed this and whispered to her, “Do you want me to help you?” She looked over to his paper a few times. K did not seem to be aware that this would be “cheating” for the other child, but seemed to be simply motivated by his seatmate having trouble, and likely when it is not a “test” the children do help each other, as they did during the previous activity. This seems to be a distinction that perhaps has been made in the past and could relatively easily be made for K.
K gestured me to come over in the middle of the test and whispered to me that he wanted me to walk around and look at the other children's work, which was what his teacher was doing. I made a quick comment about the wonderful work the children were doing then went to sit back down. That he said this in a whisper was very appropriate to the situation and I also had the sense he was trying to “help me” regarding what the adults did during spelling time. This was again quite appropriate, but is also consistent with K’s tendency towards perceiving himself in the role of being watchful that others are doing what they are supposed to be doing. I do not feel this comes from a “bossiness” point but rather from a helpful perspective, with a little lack of the intuitive assumption that adults generally know what they are doing. For example, when Ms. Swanson was taping the fish together, K pointed out that some of them were crooked and he could not read the words, which was in fact true and perfectly appropriate to point out in the nice way that he did. She commented that she would be more careful, and then he said, “I guess you'll have to practice that,” which is not quite typical for how children generally talk to adults but is very typical for how adults generally talk to children.
He is very respectful and clearly did not mean in any way for this to sound disrespectful but simply seemed to perceive this as a helpful comment for Ms. Swanson, perhaps trying to not sound critical for having corrected her, just as adults would do with children. This subtle distinction between the way adults talk to children and children talk to adults has improved a great deal for K in terms of his understanding of this. For instance, he used to say to adults that something was a “have to” activity if he wanted them to do something (a term I believe was used by his teacher last year to the children when they had to do something). He no longer does this now. His directiveness with adults now is polite and respectful, but done just a little more than is typical for children to do, without an apparent awareness that children are not typically in this role. Again this is an emerging area of understanding for him, and if one were not looking for and did not know this was an area where he has had a history of some lack of intuitive understanding, I do not believe that his comments would have stood out in any way as atypical.
After the tests the children went to recess. They had to gather their jackets and lunchboxes, and K went through all these transitions very easily and with confidence. He quickly joined his friend S. in line and they began joking playfully today as did some of the other children. He and S. found each other and joked around at every opportunity, as did some of the other pairs and small groups of children. Then the children went outside. Ms. Swanson said that K generally plays with his friend S., although every once in a while he will come up and “tattle” on something that S. has done, but then the two will get back together and play again quite quickly.
I observed them playing a game with the jump rope K had gotten, which involved running together in the field. They joined up with two other girls who were also running, and at one point the other girls seemed to be holding the jump rope. I could not see exactly what happened but S. went running up to get a teacher, saying that the girls had taken K’s jump rope. By the time S. got back to K he had the jump rope again and the two walked off talking together and the issue seemed to be resolved. Then K was trying to get S. to play a certain game with the jump rope, which seemed to be around catching each other with the rope, which S. did not want to play. I saw them arguing a bit in a manner similar to what the other children were doing, and then K walked off by himself with the jump rope for a few minutes. Then he went back to find S., and the two happily reunited. They then went off to find a girl, C., who had been in K’s class last year. The assistant principal who was outside during recess said that K sometimes plays with C. at recess as well. Then K, S. and C. played together for the rest of recess, pretending to catch C. with the jump rope, and laughing and jumping around together. This continued as they lined up on the way to lunch.
As they walked off to lunch, K saw that one boy had left his lunchbox and he went up to remind him, and the boy indicated that he was buying lunch today and hence that was his lunchbox. It was nice that K noticed this and went to help the child.
On the way into the cafeteria, the children passed some dandelions and K and S. both jumped out of line to pick some, as was appropriate for the situation, and they brought them in to lunch. They jumped quickly back into line. They smiled together as they did this activity. The line is not strict in any way and this type of small leaving and coming back was again overall consistent with how the other children were making the trip from the top of the hill down to the cafeteria.
S. had three dandelions and K had two but one of S.’s was quite wilted and he wanted to swap it for one of K’s. K used a phrase he often uses if he does not want something to proceed, which is again an adult phrase for children, “You get what you get and you don't get upset,” saying this a few times in response to S.’s expressing that he wanted to swap flowers so that he did not have the wilted one. I then pointed out that they had five and if they threw the wilted one away they would each have two pretty ones, and they both seemed to find this to be a good solution. K went to throw away the wilted one and when he came back they both said, “We both have the same now.”
Once in the lunchroom K sat down and put his jacket over the seat next to him, on which S. had put his dandelions, to save the spot for S. when he went to buy his lunch. K told me a little bit about his lunch and sitting next to S. as he waited for S. Once S. returned the two boys were quite playful and chatty throughout, talking about what they were going to do at recess the next day (“Let’s catch C. again!”) and joking with each other. At one point K poured a small drop of water onto the table and put his dandelions in the water, then he turned to S., who passed K his dandelions, and they talked about how K was watering all their flowers.
As they were talking about their friend C., I remembered her from last year and I said to K and S., “Doesn't she have a twin?” They both said yes, and K said “How did you know that?” I pointed out it was from when I was there last year. Then S. and K laughed and both said that they were “twin brothers” and then S. said playfully, “No, not really.”
Some of the other children came over and talked to me during lunch and K watched and listened to these conversations, and then periodically went back to eating and talking with S.
As the children were finished with lunch it was time for me to leave and I said goodbye to them.
Summary and Recommendations: To summarize, I observed K in his classroom to obtain a good understanding of his current social skills with peers in order to guide treatment.
K has made tremendous gains in terms of his primary interest now being the peers, whereas a year ago he was more interested in the activities than in his peers.
Another area of great gain that I also see in our individual sessions, and in Laurie’s work with him, is his increase in happy affect, playfulness and joking. K is now excited and enthusiastic about so many different things, intellectual as well as social. He is especially excited when he has happy interactions with peers, which now occurs very frequently.
His happy affect and much more frequent smiling is important in and of enough in terms of reflecting such a positive internal state, and this also generally helps him be less anxious, more flexible, and is likely greatly helping his capacity to connect socially with peers. Humor is a wonderful social “magnet” and K’s increasing delight in humor and the increasing typicality of his humor is clearly helping him connect with peers, helping peers notice and like him and want to connect with him, etc.
K is quite typically interactive during more structured times. At recess when all the children are out he continues to be quite interactive, but he is primarily interacting with his best friend S., and today also somewhat with his friend C.
K’s directions are increasingly typical, both with adults and peers, although he continues to have a tendency to show some difficulty in differentiating how one can talk to whom in terms of wanting to correct adults if he notices them doing something wrong. However, this appears to be much more driven from wanting to be helpful and simply not having a full intuitive understanding of how children do this with adults or whether to simply ignore this. Ms. Swanson reports that he sometimes can be overly corrective with peers as well, although I did not see this today. She indicated that this has also improved a lot over the course of this year, which may also be consistent with his greater happiness and enjoyment. He has overall become much more flexible and less rigid, and hence the issues around following the rules are less important.
It was wonderful to see K breaking rules in a very appropriate way, consistent with the culture of his class, such as whispering and being very playful with his friend during the music meeting time, and even whispering to offer help to his peer during the test, and jumping out of line with his friend to pick a couple of dandelions on the way to lunch. He is increasingly gaining a sense of the big picture of the big important rules versus small and flexible rules.
K’s current teacher’s style is excellent for him as she has many quick discussions about this throughout the day. This is a group of happy but active and spirited children overall, and there were many children breaking minor rules and other children tattling. Ms. Swanson many times made it overtly clear which rules mattered and which did not, and when tattling was or was not helpful or appropriate, and K has likely learned a good deal from this throughout the year.
Ms. Swanson also has a very playful style, and clearly sought out and appreciated humor in the children, and I imagined this approach has been extremely helpful for K’s overall emotional and social functioning this year.
In terms of continued goals to work on, these include expanding K’s friendships. While he knows all the children and connects with several of them, he is clearly especially connected with his friend S. I would continue to foster and support this friendship and also help him connect with additional peers. His teacher indicated that they are planning next year to separate the two children such that they will branch out and have other friendships. I would suggest instead keeping these two children together if that is consistent with S.’s needs (of which I am not aware), and in thinking of K’s needs, as I feel that this relationship provides an important anchor point, and one in which K can continue to foster social skills development. At the same time, friendships with other children can be fostered, through pairing him up with other children for learning and play activities, through playdates, etc. It is new for him to have such a close friend at school and I think it will be important again to build on this rather than to eliminate it in trying to help him expand.
I also recommend continuing to help refine K’s sense of who to correct and when. This will be an ongoing project in and out of school. K is clearly making good gains in this domain and his mild idiosyncrasies around this are less and less apparent.
It was wonderful to see K’s progress in the school setting even since his last observations. He is clearly a very happy, successful participant socially, academically and behaviorally.
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IP卡
狗仔卡
发表于 2011-5-11 04:14:20
显身卡
楼主
发表于 2011-5-13 08:19:52