It's important to understand how to use the reference list of an article to find information that pertains to your study or interests. As you read any article, notice who the authors cite, and for what. Go to their reference list and highlight research that relates to your topic and then find those articles in the library. You may find exactly what you need with this method, or you may find a reference in the new article that works. Look also for the names that keep coming up time and again: who are the 'experts' in the field? Who is cited with having a seminal study? When you choose your research, it's important to include these seminal studies which may be older. It's also vital to include work from the last five years that builds upon the seminal study or disagrees with it. Finally, it's important for you to have an opinion and to cite other studies and texts as to why your opinion is correct.

Directions:

Observation

you will observe a particular child or children at play. You are there to take notes about what you see. Write down conversations the children have, what they do, how they interact, the setting in which they are playing and what toys or equipment they are using. Your paper will not include your thoughts about why a child said or did something. You will be applying theory to the conversations, noting where particular theorists may place these children in developmental stages (ex. Erikson, Piaget, Kohlberg if you've read him).

Research

Make sure you have read the Hassinger-Das, et al., 2017 article, Case of Brain Science and Guided Play: A Developing Story. Read it and notice the citations. If there is a citation that appeals to you and seems to relate to and support what you saw in your observation, or a theory you feel strongly about, then find this article, read it, and apply it in your paper. You can also browse the NAEYC site, where this article is from for other articles and references.

Paper - Part I

After you observation, write up the observation and include the following information in your narrative: age of the child or children; location; discuss what the children were doing in a chronological manner that includes pertinent conversation and behaviors.

Paper - Part II

For Part IIconsider what you observed and how the activity supported (or not) language development, experiences, vocabulary, and/or social skills. How did the activity contribute to human learning? Within this section, you can incorporate your texts, but mustinclude the Hassinger-Das et al., (2017) article plus one more article (not used in this course) that you found. You are to write opinions about what you saw in the observation and support them with theory and research.

https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/may2017/case-brain-science-guided-play