Week 3 Child Observation Workshop: One Playground Morning, Three Ways to Record It

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that how a child is written down matters as much as what the child did. You met the running record, the anecdotal record, the checklist, time sampling, and event sampling, and the two-column habit that keeps what a child did apart from what it might mean. You also learned the ethics of studying children and the course's own observation rules. In this workshop you work from one volunteer's draft notes about 10 minutes at a public park. The notes are honest about the child's actions, but the volunteer mixed feelings and judgments into them and broke two of the observation rules. You will rewrite the notes as a fair running record, count one behavior two ways, read the behavior with two theories from Week 2, check the observer's rules, and then check a chatbot's reading of the same notes and correct it by hand. Every later Child Observation Workshop uses the methods and rules you practice here.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: How do a running record, an event sample, and a time sample of the same 10 minutes differ in what they keep, and what does a fair, rule-following record of this child let you say and not say?

Workshop data: A volunteer's illustrative draft notes from 10 minutes of one child's play at a public park

Source: Illustrative draft notes written for this workshop: a volunteer observer's 11 timed lines about one child, about 5 years, at a public park, with the observer's own comments mixed in and a header that breaks two of the course's observation rules. The notes describe no real child, family, or park.

• Rows: 11 timed lines, one per minute from 10:00 to 10:10; the first scaffold table rewrites the first 6 of them, and the sampling table has 5 rows
• Observer's comments: 4 comments in parentheses mixed into the behavior lines
• Header: Public park, Day 1, 10:00 to 10:10, with two notes about how the observer identified the child
• The draft notes: Observer's header (as drafted): "Public park, a weekday morning, Day 1, 10:00 to 10:10. I asked the child how old they were (they said five) and wrote down the school name printed on their shirt so I would remember them." 10:00 — Walks to the slide ladder and climbs it. Slides down. Says, "Again!" 10:01 — Waits at the ladder behind another child. Taps one foot. (Getting impatient.) 10:02 — Climbs and slides down. Laughs. 10:03 — Walks to the sandbox. Picks up a shovel. Fills a bucket with sand. 10:04 — Another child reaches for the bucket. Holds the bucket close and says, "Mine." (Being selfish.) 10:05 — Hands the shovel to the other child. Keeps the bucket. 10:06 — Runs back to the slide. Climbs and slides down. 10:07 — Sits at the bottom of the slide. Looks toward an adult sitting on a bench. (Looking for a parent.) 10:08 — Walks to the bench. Says, "Watch me." Walks back to the slide. (Showing off.) 10:09 — Climbs and slides down. Says, "Did you see?" 10:10 — Walks to the swings.

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A notebook or any free note-taking app for observation records kept in two columns (behavior and words; possible interpretation); a free spreadsheet (Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet) for time and event sample counts and percentages; and one approved chatbot used as a sparring partner whose claims about age norms, studies, and health guidance the student checks against a primary or issuing-body source before trusting them
• A notebook or any free note-taking app
• Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet
• One approved chatbot

Ways of working

• running-record
• sampling
• apply-the-theory

Procedure

1. Read the volunteer's draft notes in Part 2 twice. Copy them into your notes, then underline every word that names a feeling, a motive, a relationship, or a judgment rather than an action or a spoken word. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Your copy shows the 11 timed lines with the observer's 4 parenthesized comments underlined, plus any other judgment words you find.
2. Fill in the first table in Part 4: rewrite the lines from 10:00 to 10:05 as a running record in the present tense, with the child's exact words in quotation marks and no interpretation, and move each removed comment to its own column. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Six running-record lines with behavior and words only, and each removed comment written as a possible interpretation.
3. Define the behavior "slides down" so that two observers would count it the same way. Then fill in the second table: event-sample every time the child slides down across all 11 lines, and time-sample what the child is doing at 10:02, 10:04, 10:06, 10:08, and 10:10. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: A one-sentence behavior definition, a count of slides with their times, and five time-sample entries.
4. Enter the five time-sample marks in a spreadsheet with one row per mark and a column that says whether the child is on the slide. Use COUNTIF to count the on-slide marks, divide by the number of marks, and multiply by 100 for the percentage. Tool: Google Sheets, or any free spreadsheet. Check: A count of on-slide marks out of 5 and that share written as a percentage.
5. Fill in the third table: for the 10:08 and 10:09 lines, write one reading from Erikson's stages and one from a behaviorist view, each as "may show", then write what the second theory adds or disputes. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Two hedged readings for each line and one sentence comparing the theories.
6. Fill in the fourth table: check the observer's header against each of the course's observation rules, and rewrite the header so it follows every rule. Tool: A notebook or any free note-taking app. Check: Each rule marked kept or broken, and a rewritten header that names the child only by role and estimated age.
7. Answer the analysis questions in Part 5. Then complete the critique step in Part 6 with one approved chatbot, or with the printed flawed analysis on the equivalent route. Tool: One approved chatbot. Check: Written answers to all six questions and a 3-5 sentence critique report.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if you cannot open a spreadsheet or a note-taking app, or cannot print the tables.

Copy the four tables by hand onto paper or into any text file, read the draft notes from this page, count the slides and the time-sample marks by hand, work the percentage with a written division, and complete every table, every analysis question, and the critique step in the same order. Submit a photo or scan of the paper, or the text file, for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

Rewrite the first six lines so a second observer standing beside the volunteer would agree with every word.

Student scaffold table 1

Time	What the child did and said	Possible interpretations (removed from the draft)
10:00
10:01
10:02
10:03
10:04
10:05

Count the same 10 minutes two ways to see what each sampling method keeps and misses.

Student scaffold table 2

Time-sample mark	What the child is doing at the mark	On the slide? (yes or no)
10:02
10:04
10:06
10:08
10:10

Read two lines with two theories, each as a possibility, so no single theory becomes the verdict.

Student scaffold table 3

Line	Erikson's stages: may show	A behaviorist view: may show	What the second theory adds or disputes
10:08 — Says, "Watch me."
10:09 — Says, "Did you see?"

Check the observer's header against the course's rules before you trust the record.

Student scaffold table 4

Observation rule	What the header did	Kept or broken	Your repair
Watch only in a public place where watching children is ordinary, from a distance
Never interact with a child
Write no name or identifying detail
Never assess, screen, or label a real child

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. How many times does the child slide down across the 11 lines, and at which times? How many of the 5 time-sample marks find the child on the slide, and what percentage of the marks is that? Show the division.
2. List each comment you moved out of the description column, and for each one write what a second observer could actually see or hear at that moment.
3. Your event sample and your time sample give different pictures of how much the child used the slide. Explain why, and say which method fits a question about how often the child slides, and which fits a question about how the child spends the morning.
4. Compare your two readings of "Watch me" and "Did you see?": what does Erikson's initiative vs. guilt suggest, what does a behaviorist reading of adult attention suggest, and what does the comparison show? End in one plain sentence.
5. What can 10 minutes of one illustrative child at one park not show about that child, and what would a fair observer need before saying anything about the child's development?
6. Choose one reflection: (a) Which of the volunteer's comments would you most likely have written yourself, and what in your own experience with children led you to it? (b) Which observation rule felt hardest to follow in a real park, and how would you keep it anyway?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed workshop tables above. Below are a volunteer's illustrative draft notes from 10 minutes of watching one child, about 5 years, at a public park; they describe no real child. Observer's header (as drafted): "Public park, a weekday morning, Day 1, 10:00 to 10:10. I asked the child how old they were (they said five) and wrote down the school name printed on their shirt so I would remember them." Draft notes, with the observer's own comments in parentheses: 10:00 — Walks to the slide ladder and climbs it. Slides down. Says, "Again!" 10:01 — Waits at the ladder behind another child. Taps one foot. (Getting impatient.) 10:02 — Climbs and slides down. Laughs. 10:03 — Walks to the sandbox. Picks up a shovel. Fills a bucket with sand. 10:04 — Another child reaches for the bucket. Holds the bucket close and says, "Mine." (Being selfish.) 10:05 — Hands the shovel to the other child. Keeps the bucket. 10:06 — Runs back to the slide. Climbs and slides down. 10:07 — Sits at the bottom of the slide. Looks toward an adult sitting on a bench. (Looking for a parent.) 10:08 — Walks to the bench. Says, "Watch me." Walks back to the slide. (Showing off.) 10:09 — Climbs and slides down. Says, "Did you see?" 10:10 — Walks to the swings. Please do four things. First, rewrite the notes as a running record that keeps what the child did and said apart from what it might mean. Second, count how many times the child slides down, and say what the child is doing at 10:02, 10:04, 10:06, 10:08, and 10:10. Third, explain the child's behavior with two theories of child development. Fourth, say whether the observer followed good rules for observing children in public, and what this one record cannot show.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often add that "by age 5 children should be able to share and wait their turn", turning an age into a deadline the child is measured against.
• Chatbots often suggest the child "may have attention problems" because the child moved from slide to sandbox to bench to swings in 10 minutes.
• Chatbots often say Erikson's initiative vs. guilt "starts at exactly age 3 and ends at age 6".
• Chatbots often credit operant conditioning to Bandura, or call Erikson's stages Piaget's.
• Chatbots often add a figure such as "studies show most 5-year-olds slide about 4 times in 10 minutes" or invent a quotation from a researcher.
• Chatbots often call the child "a kinesthetic learner" who learns best by moving, as if learning styles were an established finding.
• Chatbots often say the adult on the bench caused the child to slide more, or that children who are watched by adults always play more confidently.
• Chatbots often assume the adult on the bench is "the child's mom" and describe that as a normal family outing.
• Chatbots often label the child as having "a difficult temperament" or as "securely attached" from one morning at a park.
• Chatbots often add their own safety rule, such as "5-year-olds can be left alone on a playground", as if it were established guidance.
• Chatbots often close with a "balanced" summary such as "the child was a little selfish but mostly well behaved", quietly keeping the observer's judgments.

Write 3-5 sentences naming what the chatbot got right and at least two places where it slipped into one of the failures above, quoting its words and correcting each by hand against this page, Chapter 3, and the course's observation rules.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 2 (describe research and observation methods with children — descriptive, correlational, and experimental designs; longitudinal and cross-sectional designs; running records, anecdotal records, checklists, and time and event sampling — and the ethics of consent, assent, and confidentiality) and Objective 1 (explain child development's domains, periods, and core questions (nature and nurture, continuity and discontinuity), the ecological systems model, and the major theories of development, describing what each theory explains and what it leaves out), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis of the volunteer's notes, printed here in full: "The child got impatient at 10:01 and was selfish at 10:04, which is behind for a 5-year-old, since by age 5 children should share without being asked. Moving from the slide to the sandbox to the swings in 10 minutes may mean the child has an attention problem. Erikson's initiative stage starts at exactly age 3, and Bandura's operant conditioning explains why the child said 'Watch me.' Studies show that most 5-year-olds slide 4 times in 10 minutes, so this child is average. The child is a kinesthetic learner who learns best by moving. The adult on the bench caused the child to keep sliding, and the child's mom was watching, as a normal family would. The child seems to have a difficult temperament. Children this age can safely be left alone on a playground. The observer did a good job asking the child's age and noting the school so the record is accurate. Overall the child was a little selfish but mostly well behaved." Mark every error you find, quote it, name the failure it shows, and correct it by hand against this page, Chapter 3, and the course's observation rules. Submit the marked-up analysis in place of the chatbot report and share link; it is graded by the same rubric rows for the same points.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• The four completed tables from Part 4, with your behavior definition and the spreadsheet count or a hand count with its division
• Written answers to all six analysis questions, including your chosen reflection option
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Child Observation Workshop report on a volunteer's illustrative draft notes from 10 minutes at a public park: four completed tables (a running record with the comments moved to their own column, an event sample and a time sample with a percentage, two theories read against two lines, and a rule-by-rule check of the observer's header with a repair), written answers to six analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's reading of the same notes, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or labelled tables with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Running record with description kept apart	All six rewritten lines are in the present tense, quote the child's exact words, and carry no feeling, motive, relationship, or judgment, and every removed comment sits in the interpretation column as a possibility.	The lines are rewritten, but one or two keep a judgment word, are not in the present tense, or drop a quoted word, or a removed comment is written as a fact.	No running record, or the draft's comments are left inside the description.
Event and time samples counted	The behavior is defined so two observers would agree, every slide is counted with its time, all five time-sample marks are filled, the percentage is worked with the division shown, and the answer explains why the two methods differ.	The counts are taken but the definition, one time-sample mark, the division, or the explanation of the difference is missing or contains an error.	No event sample and no time sample.
Two theories compared	Both lines get an Erikson reading and a behaviorist reading, each credited correctly and written as "may show", and the comparison ends in one plain sentence naming what it shows.	Only one theory is applied to both lines, a theory is credited to the wrong researcher, or the comparison has no closing sentence.	No theory is applied.
Caught-and-corrected AI slip, on either route	The chatbot critique report, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis, quotes at least two errors and corrects each by hand against this page, Chapter 3, and the observation rules; either route earns this band equally.	One error is quoted and corrected on either route, or errors are named without a correction.	No critique on either route, or chatbot output is pasted without checking it.
Ethics, limits, and reflection	Every rule is checked against the header, the header is rewritten to follow all of them, the limit of one 10-minute record is named, and the chosen reflection option is answered honestly with a specific example.	The rule check, the limit, or the reflection is missing or incomplete.	No rule check, no limit, and no reflection.

Quality Gate

• Every line of the running record is in the present tense, quotes the child's exact words, and carries no feeling, motive, relationship, or judgment.
• Every removed comment sits in the interpretation column, written as a possibility.
• The slide count, the time-sample count, and the percentage are taken from the notes on this page and the division is shown.
• Each theory is credited as Chapter 3 and Week 2 credit it, and each reading is written as "may show".
• The rewritten header names the child only by role and estimated age, with no school, name, photo, or interaction.
• No study, statistic, quotation, age norm, or safety rule is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors by hand.