Quick Question about UNIT 402, Web Observations

[level3apprentice]

Good Morning!

I am writing my final unit for my level 3 (hooray), and just need a bit of guidance with unit 402, specifically what Web observations are used for?

I need to analyse each observation method, which I have done, however i've never used a web observation and cannot find any information about them in any of the documents from my workplace, on smart-screen, my Penny Tassoni book or on google/bing web searches!!

I've found one piece of information on silky steps:

"Spider's web - good for assessing attachment to a key figure and what might support the child's developing confidence & independance eg. if particular type of activities engage their interest"

obviously this isn't enough for me to analyse what a web observation is used for, I understand its similar to a tracking observation (which i've used before) but other than that I'm stumped.

Could any of you give me some detail as to what a web observation is used for, or link me to something about web observations as this is the one part I'm stuck on!

thank you!

[Ruthierhyme]

Quote from page 17 of the Early Years Observation and Planning in practice book by Practical Preschool 2010

Spider's Web observations

A spider's web is an observation that takes place with the parent and can be used when a child starts a setting to monitor when they are ready for the parent to leave. As well as informing the staff it can be reassuring for the parent to know that their child is ready to be left, because they have diagrammatic evidence.


Think of the 'web' as starting with the parent that then shows the child's 'thread' movements away from their parent, onwards to other activities where you can record the amount of time spent at an activity before returning to the parent.


A spider's web observation can monitor how frequently the child moves away and comes back to the parent. The observation can also time how long a child spends at an activity and how long with a parent so that a judgement can be made concerning when the child is ready for the parent to leave.

As well as informing you of what activities the child has accessed it can also inform you as to what areas they has not accessed. This can help you when planning the environment, as it may be that resources are not set up in an appealing manner.

Spider's web observations can carry on throughout a whole session to provide information on exactly where the child has been the entire time. This can be time-consuming for the staff, however as long as you keep an eye on where the child is and the timings you can continue a normal routine.

Advantages

• A spider's web observation can give parent the confidence that their child has settled and is ready to be left.
  

Disadvantage

• Spider's web observations give no indication of the emotions of a child. It is possible to see for example that a child has left their parent for 5 minutes, but there is no indication of how hapillly that child left.
• Moreover, there is no information available as to why the child keeps going back to their parent - was it because the parent was calling to them or did the child need to return to feel secure. It is also unable to tell if the parent went with them to an activity.
  To do this observation accurately you would need to inform the parent what you are doing and why, and ask them to stay in one place. From the completed example you can see that the child left the parent only for short periods of time and didn't venture very far from their parent.
  However, looking at this example it is possible to say that by the end of the observation the child is ready for the parent to leave, as the journey number seven they go from the parent to the water, where they stay for two minutes, and then go to the puzzles for four minutes, and then to the playdough area again without returning to the parent in between.