Guidance Journal #1

Lab: 3 and 4 Mon/Wed PM Name: Jaclyn Rothschadl

Your journal will be an ongoing observation of 2 entries focusing on anecdotal observations of
guidance with young children. All of the entries will be focusing on your interactions with the
children unless otherwise worked out with your mentor teacher. An example of a journal entry
is after the rubric. You may record your observations on note cards and then transfer the
observations to a typed form to provide room to interpret what you have observed. (When
turning in your guidance journal, this page should accompany it.)

Guidance Journal #1

Observer's Name: Jaclyn Rothschadl Child/Children Observed: L.T. and R.E

Child 1(L.T.) Birth Date: 12/29/13 Child 2 (R.E.) Birth Date: 8/24/14

Children's Ages: (L.T.)- 3.8.28 (R.E)- 3.1.03

Date & time of Observation: 9/27/17 at 3:30pm

Context: R.E. and L.T. were previously playing in the kitchen area when the teachers explain
that it is time to clean up. I am in the same area to help clean up. The other teachers in the
room were helping other children and unaware of the conflict arising.

Interaction
“Ok it is time to clean up. R.E. and L.T. can
you help me clean up the food?”
Interpretation
I asked the boys to help me clean up and told them
exactly what to clean up, because they have had other
situations together during transitions where R.E. won’t
follow directions, so L.T. feels he needs to assist. I should
not have made the request a questions and could have
said, “please clean up the food.” I was using scaffolding,
a term by Vygotsky, to demonstrate what I wanted them
to do.

L.T grabs the food and places them in the

basket. He notices R.E. is not doing what is
asked and still playing with the fruit.
L.T. tells him, “R.E. it is time to clean up.”
L.T. is showing that he is in Erikson’s stage of Initiative v.
Guilt. He is showing initiative by trying to lead R.E. to the
decision he made to follow my directions.

R.E. is showing that he does not want to clean up even

R.E. continues not to do so.
though I had asked. This is a form of egocentrism. Piaget
is the theorist who described that children in the
preoperational stage think about themselves and what
they want and not others or what they are supposed to
do, which is egocentrism. The preferred behavior would
have been for him to help clean up.

L.T. is showing signs of aggression by trying to take the

toy from R.E. I could have seen what natural
L.T. goes to R.E. and tries to grab the fruit consequence was going to happen, but to prevent hitting

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from him and they fight over the piece of
fruit. I walk over to the boys.
“Boys, no thank you. It is time to clean up
R.E. and L.T. thank you for reminding him,
but he can do it himself. Now let’s finish
putting the fruit away.”
L.T. goes to the table and cleans up, but is
still watching R.E.
R.E. goes to the light table and pushes the
box of magnet tiles on the ground.
L.T. goes over to the light table grabs the
magnet tiles in R.E.’s hand and pushes R.E.
down and says, “R.E. stop! It is time to clean
up.”
R.E. gets up and grabs the box from L.T.
“No!”
I walk over to the boys to resolve the
situation and kneel down in front of them.
“R.E. it is time to clean up. Please help me
put the magnet tiles away that you had
spilled. L.T. we cannot push our friends
down. They might get hurt and that can
make them very said. Please tell him sorry
and go help our friends clean up the
dinosaurs.”
“Sorry R.E.”
L.T. then walked away and helped clean up
the dinosaurs and R.E. helped pick up some
of the magnet tiles.
or somebody getting hurt I stepped in. To prevent what
was to come I should have separated the two boy right
away and had one of them go and help clean up a
different station. I also could have talked to L.T. about
what he was feeling when he saw R.E. was not following
directions. L.T.’s preferred behavior would have been to
ignore what R.E. was doing and continue to do his task
and complete it.
He is continuing to test the limits in the classroom by not
following his directions to clean up.
L.T. is showing physical aggression by pushing R.E.
down. The boys are not using proper self- regulation of
their emotions and that resulted in them to fight over the
box.
I had used Piaget’s reciprocal sanction of exclusion when
I asked L.T. to go clean up somewhere else. I then used
Restitution with R.E. to help me clean up the mess he
made.
Through this observation I learned many things. First I
should have asked the boys their feelings when I had first
talked to them. I then should have separated them from
the situation in its entirety before it had escalated. It had
escalated as L.T. watched R.E. not follow directions and
he felt he had to get aggressive to do what he was
supposed to. This shows that L.T. had trouble regulating
his emotions while he watched R.E. The problem-solving
technique that I had skipped in this observation was
talking it out with them both and expressing feeling.
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 Guidance Journal #2

Observer's Name: Jaclyn Rothschadl Child/Children Observed: J.A.

Child’s Birth Date: 11-26-13

Child’s Age: 3.10.13

Date & time of Observation: 10/9/17 2:50pm

Context: The class is transitioning to snack time from story time. The class was asked
to go wash their hands and then sit at their snack tables for snack. J.A. did not want to
wash his hands. The observations took place until after snack time.

Interaction
“Ok it is time for snack time. Please go
wash your hands J.A.”
“No! I don’t want to!” J.A. throws himself
on the floor.
“We have to J.A., because we have
germs on our hands and we don’t want
them on our food.”
Interpretation
J.A. was sitting on my lap during story time. When I
asked him to follow the student teacher’s directions
he was showing egocentrism. Piaget is the theorist
who described that children in the preoperational
stage think about themselves and what they want
and not others or what they are supposed to do

“Mine aren’t dirty!” J.A. cries out.

“How about I help you and we can see Here I am practicing scaffolding. This practice helped
who does it the fastest?” get J.A. to transition to the next step, which was
sitting at the snack time table. I tried to engage J.A.
“Ok!” J.A replies to do the activity by making a game out of it.

J.A. and myself go and wash our hands

together. J.A. does not protest anymore
and dries them off.

“Okay, let’s go sit at the snack table.”

“No! I don’t want to!” J.A. stomps his feet
on the ground next to his chair at the
snack table.
“J.A. please sit next to our friends, so we
can eat snack and then play!”
Again J.A. is demonstrating that he is in the
preoperational stage and show egocentrism. The
preferred behavior would be for him to go sit at his
spot.

J.A. sits down. As I went to grab the

snack he was talking with the other
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children at the table. I gave them all
napkins and a snack mix with m&m’s,
yogurt covered raisins, and cereal. He
noticed the snack and started to cry.

“I don’t like this snack!”

“J.A. you haven’t tried it yet, so you don’t

know if you do or not. Look there is M
&M’s I bet you will like those. Look our
other friends like it, so will you please
try?”

J.A tries the M&M’s and eats them all. He

then asks,” Teacher can I have more?”

“I’m sorry J.A. we don’t have anymore,

but the yogurt covered ones are really
good too!”

“No! I don’t want those!” J.A. starts to cry J.A. is showing instrumental aggression by throwing
very loudly. He then throws the yogurt the yogurt cover raisin on the floor.
covered raisins on the floor. “I’m all
done!”

“J.A. you can be all done once you pick

up what you threw on the ground. We do
not throw our food on the floor.” He is continuing to test the limits in the classroom by
not following his directions to clean up.
“No!” He continues to cry.
“Please pick them up.”
“No!”
Here I was trying to use different strategies to deal
“Okay, you tell me when you are ready to with J.A. I was trying to give him space to see if he
clean up your snack and you can play would stop making his loud noise.
with us.” J.A. sat in his spot for about two
minutes and continued to cry and would
look around to see if anyone was
noticing. The three other children that
were at the table cleaned up their spot
and started to play with their snack time
bucket. “J.A. can I help you pick up your
snack, so you can play with us?”

“No! I just want to play!”

I had used Piaget’s reciprocal sanction of Restitution
“You can play with us once you pick up with J.A. to help me clean up the mess he made.
your snack and the ones you threw on

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the floor.”
Laura then came in the room,” J.A.
remember how sad you were yesterday
when you were mad and missed getting
to play after snack. You wouldn’t want
that to happen today, so let’s pick up
your snack and the ones you threw. “
J.A. picked up the pieces he threw on
the floor and sat down and ate the rest of
his snack. He then cleaned up his spot
and played with the table the rest of the
time until pick up.
During Laura’s interaction I noticed that she kept a
firm tone with J.A. She reminded him the
consequences of what would happen if he did not
clean up his snack.
From this observation I learned that indirect
guidance should be used during transitions and
snack time to make it easier for J.A. A certain
strategy I could have used was solution formation
with J.A. This observation shows that J.A. had
trouble regulating his emotions during the
transitions. I feel like I did do a good job in staying
consistent with having J.A. pick up his snack if he
wanted to play. Next time it may be more appropriate
if I ask how J.A. is feeling and then do all of the
steps of problem solving.