The child I observed was a seven-year-old girl in second grade who was seated on the second highest ability table in a mixed class. When not at school, she lived a considerable distance away, meaning she drove to and from school and was often the first child to arrive in the morning and the last to leave in the afternoon. I will focus on the social and emotional development of this child who we will henceforth call CI. He carried out two types of observation: narrative observation and temporal sampling. I chose to do both because the strengths of each help support the weaknesses of the other. The main weaknesses of temporal sampling are that it causes the observer to miss potentially important behaviors that occur between the times the child is observed and the context of the behavior is not recorded, meaning that 'no cause or effect can be seen. It is because of these weaknesses that I chose to also carry out a narrative observation; This type of observation is very detailed and focuses on an entire scenario: that is, the cause of a behavior, the behavior itself, and the result of the behavior. These strengths compensate for the weaknesses of temporal sampling, but narrative observation also has weaknesses. Narrative observation is time consuming and, especially when carried out over short periods of time, may be limited in the extent of information obtained. Although these two observations help limit the impact of their weaknesses, they still have flaws. Together they bring together information that, while moderately useful, is limited in what can be gleaned from it because it does not have the combined depth that could have been achieved by making more observations. I feel like this...... middle of paper ...... over a longer period of time, like a quarter or a year, it's quite possible that although it currently seems slightly behind on its milestones, it could reach and even exceed them. More in-depth observations could also have provided a better understanding of the causes of C's development, which would have been particularly useful in suggesting strategies to improve his learning. As it stands, I believe C suffered from insecure attachment as a child, which affected her emotional development, and she may suffer from some dyscalculic tendencies, which impact her perceived cognitive development. Although she is in no way dyscalculic, the methods I have suggested to her would undoubtedly help to improve her mathematical abilities and, if used throughout her studies, could contribute to a considerable improvement in her overall cognitive development..