Child Observation Essay

Introduction The child I am observing (Child N), is a five-year six-month old boy who attends a public school located in the West Village area of Manhattan. He is classified as being speech impaired. As per classroom teachers, he is bright in the sense that there are some tasks he is able to complete without verbal cues such as sorting, and an inquisitive child in the sense that shows interest in new things and people. My first day he stared at me nearly the entire time I was in the class. He demonstrates delays in most areas of development. Child N receives speech therapy individually two times a week for thirty minutes in a separate location and in a group of three, once a week, for thirty minutes in a separate location. He receives occupational
The day I observed the child was the day he had speech therapy in a group session. Due to the confidentiality of the other children, the speech therapist was uncomfortable with me attending the speech session with Child N. As per the teachers the child was said to demonstrate consistent errors in speech sound production. One or more of the child’s phonological patterns of sound are at least 40% disordered which makes the conversational intelligibility significantly affected. Some of these errors include distortions, substitutions and omissions. As noted in chapter 8 in the textbook, speech sounds errors are defined as articulation problems. (Heward p.306) At times he becomes over excited and can be perseverative, when he perceives a language task, such as word retrieval. He would become silly by laughing then trying to change the subject. These behaviors occur to some extent as an avoidant mechanism. Child N did attend to and perform better to nonverbal tasks which he has strength in. Task that include piling one block on top of one another or writing the letters of the alphabet. He also demonstrates strength in picture naming. He is able to identify and verbally communicate what a picture is. He didn’t show interest in expressing his thoughts and ideas after story time when a teacher asked what he thought was his favorite part of the