The Equivalence of Males on Planet Earth

Observation Report

This observation is of a 10 year old male child during his lunch recess at an elementary school located in the South Bay area. The student participates in a day treatment program for children with emotional/social difficulties. The length of this observation was approximately forty five minutes. For the purpose of confidentiality this student will be referred to as John. In the first section of this observational analysis a brief description of the program which John participates in will be given. This will be followed by an analysis of John's activities during the observation.

Observation

The day treatment program John participates in is located on the campus of a public elementary school, and is supported by a local private mental health agency. In general, children referred to this program experience some form of emotional and/or social deficit. In addition to John, there are nine other students enrolled within the program at present. John currently attends a mainstreaming class three times per week, where he has developed several friendships with his peers. This observation began as the students in the day treatment program were let out for recess following lunch. After leaving the class John ran to the designated play area with another student. The designated play area of the playground where the students of this program are restricted to consists of a ?jungle bar? set ; This play structure consists of ?monkey bars? with tall vertical poles for sliding down attached at each end, three parallel bars of varying height, and horizontal bars constructed in a ladder fashion for climbing on. Additionally, the designated area includes a tether ball court, and a balancing beam constructed in a ?Z? shape. The staff has restricted the students of the program to this area due to these childrens' limited abilities to demonstrate social skills, and in order to better supervise the group during recess activities. However, other children at the school are not restricted from this area and interact freely with the children from the program. After John had arrived at the play area he immediately jumped onto the parallel bars and began to swing back and forth, and launched himself into the air landing awkwardly almost falling down. John preceded to jump up onto the ?monkey bars.? John climbed about half way across, where he was confronted with another student who was crossing in the opposite direction. At this point John jumped off of the bars and ran back to where he had begun, and proceeded to attempt crossing the bars again and made it. John went back to the parallel bars where he proceeded to swing, jumping off periodically. At one point John attempted to gain the staffs attention to watch what he could do on the bars; John swung himself repeatedly and then let one hand go, this spun him to one side where another parallel bar was located, which John grabbed onto. The staff shouted ?good job John,? which seemed to motivate John to repeat this trick a few more times. After playing on the bars for a while longer, John went over to two other peers from his class who were engaging in pretend play. These children appeared to be playing a game of ?army combat,? as they were running about shooting each other. John ran around the play area attempting to shoot his peers with his machine gun, and ended when they began pretending to be in hand-to-hand combat . At this point this point the staff directed the students not to get too physical, and the small group of children ran off. John played with this group for a while longer, as they would shoot at each other periodically and ran around the play area. John disengaged himself from playing with this group as he was distracted by a nearby puddle of water. John jumped over the puddle, and was prompted by the staff not to step in the water. After this warning John jumped over the puddle a few more times before picking up a stick, which he used to poke and investigate the tiny pool. John seemed very interested in this activity, and spent approximately five to eight minutes investigating what he had found before losing

interest and returning to the bars. There were more children now playing on the bars then had been earlier, and John seemed to grow inpatient; There were about four children occupying the parallel bars doing various tasks when John approached the bars. John waited for a short time (about 1 to 2 minutes), and then began to yell at a younger student to move so that he could do something. The child did not respond to Johns request to move, and John crossed his arms and began to pout. After another minute or so, John went to the staff saying that the other kids were just sitting on the bars not letting him get on. The staff prompted the students that they had to take turns on the bars. Following the staffs prompts one of the children allowed John onto the bars. John swung back and forth and then got off by launching himself into the air as he had done previously.