Long / short observations??

[sarak31]

Hi all - I'm just getting back into childminding after a break for a year - am glad to be back and my first mindees start at the beginning of March! I'm trying to get my head around observations. Previously I only did short, reactionary observations, picking up on things the children were doing, relating to EYFS and planning next steps - but was just as EYFS was being launched and I didn't really know what I was doing! I went to a briefing at my DD preschool who said for EYFS we should be doing 'long' observations as well - theirs were a few pages long and were around an Adult Initiated activity with a focused area of EYFS for observation and assessment. Should we be doing this and if so how often do you do them?? Thanks all.

[Heaven Scent]

No we don't have to do long ones - don't worry - what you were doing sounds jim dandy to me.

[sarak31]

Thank goodness - feel like I'm running to keep up at the moment trying to get my head around how all this really works - glad I'm on the right track! Thank you x:)

[singingcactus]

I have done a couple of long ones, but only when there was an issue that I was working on with other professionals. I don't do them routinely - the ones I did were linked to the child's IEP from nursery, or when another child was being shall we say bolshy and I needed to document it.

[sarah707]

I very occasionally use long ones, just if there's something special I want to document like singingcactus says.

Otherwise it's little ones :D

[Mollymop]

I do long ones every month per child and short ones often. It's really up to you how you do it x