| Course | DNRS 6800 Advanced Pediatric Development and Behavior |
|---|---|
| Week | Week 2 |
| Paper type | Observation write-up |
| Length | About 760 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Walden University |
| Program | Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for DNRS 6800 Week 2
Observation Write-Up: Forty Minutes in the Block Area With a 4-Year-Old, Recorded Before It Is Read
Student Name
College of Nursing, Walden University
DNRS 6800: Advanced Pediatric Development and Behavior
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Observation Write-Up: Forty Minutes in the Block Area With a 4-Year-Old, Recorded Before It Is Read
Setting
Child: Theo, 4 years and 2 months old, a composite built from typical presentations for teaching. Place: the block area of his preschool classroom, a carpeted corner with a shelf of wooden unit blocks. Time: 9:10 to 9:50 a.m., 40 minutes, during free choice time. Others present: five other children who came and went, and a teaching assistant seated about 2 meters away. What Theo was doing when observation began: kneeling on the carpet, taking blocks from the shelf one at a time. The observer sat outside the area and did not speak to him.
Running Record
9:10. Takes six rectangular blocks from the shelf, carrying two at a time. Places them end to end in a line. Stands one block upright at the end of the line.
9:14. Stacks four blocks vertically. The tower falls when he adds a fifth. Looks at the teaching assistant. Assistant says, "Try again." Stacks four blocks again. Places the fifth block more slowly, holding it with both hands. The tower stands.
9:18. Knocks the tower down with his right hand. Laughs. Looks at the assistant. Stacks again, five blocks.
9:21. A girl enters the area and takes two blocks from the shelf. Theo says, "Those are mine." Girl says, "There's more." Theo turns back to his tower. Girl builds beside him. Neither speaks for 3 minutes.
9:25. Girl says, "Make a house." Theo places two blocks on either side of his tower. Says, "This is the door." Girl adds a block on top. Theo moves it to the side and says, "No, here." Girl leaves it there.
9:31. A second boy runs into the area and steps on the line of blocks. Blocks scatter. Theo stands, says loudly, "Stop it," and pushes the boy's arm once. Assistant walks over and kneels. Theo points at the blocks and says, "He broke it." Assistant says, "You can tell him with words." Theo says to the boy, "You broke it." The boy picks up two blocks and hands them to Theo.
9:36. Theo rebuilds the line, counting aloud, "one, two, three, four, five, six," touching each block. Adds two more blocks and says, "eight."
9:42. Picks up a triangular block, turns it over three times, and places it on top of the tower. Says to the girl, "It's a roof." Girl says, "Cool."
9:47. Assistant calls cleanup. Theo carries blocks back to the shelf, two at a time, and places them on the matching shelf outlines. Stops after eight blocks and sits down. Assistant says his name. He stands and returns three more blocks.
Interpretation
Only here are conclusions allowed, and each points back to a line in the record.
Social-emotional development. Theo moves from building beside a peer to building with her within a few minutes, the shift from parallel to cooperative play expected around this age, when he accepts her suggestion to make a house and they share the structure. He asserts ownership early, when the girl first takes blocks, but lets it go when told there are more. When his work is knocked over, his first response is physical, a single push, but he uses words when an adult prompts him and accepts the other boy's repair. Twice he looks to the adult after an event, once after the tower falls and once after he knocks it down, which reads as social referencing, checking an adult's reaction to what just happened. Taken together, these fit the skills most children show by age 4, such as playing cooperatively and using words to solve a conflict with some adult help (Zubler et al., 2022).
Fine motor and early cognitive development. He carries and places blocks with control, adjusts his grip and speed after the tower falls, and succeeds on the second attempt, which shows he adapts a motor plan after an error. He counts six blocks with one-to-one touching and then names eight after adding two, and he uses a block symbolically as a roof and a gap as a door. These fit expected pre-academic and symbolic play skills for his age.
What this observation cannot show. A single 40-minute session is one sample from one setting (Lipkin et al., 2020). It does not show whether the push after the tower was scattered is typical of him or unusual, and it does not show how he plays at home. Observation guides for young children recommend multiple observations across settings before drawing conclusions about patterns (Cohen et al., 2016).
References
Cohen, D. H., Stern, V., Balaban, N., & Gropper, N. (2016). Observing and recording the behavior of young children (6th ed.). Teachers College Press.
Lipkin, P. H., Macias, M. M., Council on Children With Disabilities, & Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. (2020). Promoting optimal development: Identifying infants and young children with developmental disorders through developmental surveillance and screening. Pediatrics, 145(1), Article e20193449. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-3449
Zubler, J. M., Wiggins, L. D., Macias, M. M., Whitaker, T. M., Shaw, J. S., Squires, J. K., Pajek, J. A., Wolf, R. B., Slaughter, K. S., Broughton, A. S., Gerndt, K. L., Mlodoch, B. J., & Lipkin, P. H. (2022). Evidence-informed milestones for developmental surveillance tools. Pediatrics, 149(3), Article e2021052138. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2021-052138
DNRS 6800 Week 2 instructions, in plain terms
The second week often asks you to observe a child in a natural setting such as a classroom, park or home and write up what you saw. Expect the prompt to ask for setting details, a running record or anecdotal notes, and an interpretation that links behavior to developmental theory or milestones. DNRS 6800 faculty grade the separation of description from inference closely. Consent and privacy rules apply, so most sections want names changed or a composite used. Most DNRS 6800 sections expect three to five APA pages for the write-up. The interpretation should cite developmental sources rather than personal impressions. Some instructors set a minimum observation length, commonly thirty to sixty minutes. Bring the timed notes you took on site, because the running record is graded on its own before the interpretation is read. Many prompts also ask which developmental domains the observation touched.
How the DNRS 6800 Week 2 example is put together
The write-up carries a short setting block at the top: where the observation happened, how long it ran, which other people were nearby, and what Theo was busy with as watching began. The body is a running record written in verbs. A four year old stacks, knocks the tower down, looks at the adult, stacks again. No sentence in that section contains the words shy, defiant, delayed or anxious, because those are conclusions and the section holds evidence. A separate interpretation follows and is allowed the vocabulary the record refused. Two developmental domains are named there, each tied back to a line in the record by paraphrase rather than by page number. The child is a composite, assembled from typical presentations rather than lifted from any visit.
Where the marks sit in the DNRS 6800 Week 2 rubric
The heaviest rubric row on an observation write-up asks whether description and inference stayed apart, and it is the row most submissions lose. Writing that a toddler was frustrated puts a conclusion in the evidence section, and a grader marking closely will strike it there even if the same word is defensible two paragraphs down. The example protects that row by policing its own adjectives. A second row rewards detail dense enough that another clinician could reconstruct the scene, which is why duration, room and adults are recorded rather than assumed. Points are also lost to a record written in summary tense, where an hour collapses into three sentences about how things generally went. Where a section grades reference formatting, it is scored on the reference page, not the prose.
DNRS 6800 Week 2 help: mistakes that cost marks
The heaviest loss on this assignment comes from mixing inference into the record, writing "Theo was frustrated" where the observation was that he knocked the tower down and walked away. Record actions and words, then interpret later. Another mistake is an interpretation that ignores the record and discusses development in general. Tie each claim to a timed entry. Writers also judge from a single episode, though one forty-minute visit supports only tentative statements. Keep the setting section concrete, so a reader can see the corner and the shelf. Avoid diagnostic language entirely. Check that the milestones you cite come from the 2022 CDC revision if you use them. Writers sometimes forget the other children in the block area, yet who Theo played beside is part of the setting. Finally, do not let the interpretation run longer than the record it rests on.
Get a DNRS 6800 Week 2 example written to your instructions
Give the desk your Week 2 prompt, the rubric attached to it, and a sentence about the setting you observed, and a fresh observation write-up comes back shaped to that assignment. First custom sample is free, turned around in 24-48 hours, and written so you can compare its structure against your own notes before submission.
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DNRS 6800 Week 2 questions, answered
Can the desk write up an observation I performed?
The desk writes an example around a described or composite child, never a reconstruction of a real one. Field notes, clinic records, practicum hours and anything tied to an identifiable patient belong to you and stay with you. Describe the kind of setting and the kind of behavior you need modeled, and the sample is built to that shape without touching your actual record.
Why does the record avoid words like anxious or delayed?
Because that section exists to hold what anyone in the room would have seen. Terms of that kind are judgments, and once a judgment sits inside the evidence the reader cannot separate what happened from what the writer concluded. The example moves every such word into the interpretation section, where it belongs and where graders expect to find it.
How long is the finished write-up?
Roughly three to four pages of body text, weighted toward the running record, plus a reference page. Section length varies with what your prompt sets, so treat the proportions as the useful part rather than the page count. The running record earns its size because it is the part a grader tests every conclusion against.
Where can I find a free DNRS 6800 Week 2 sample paper?
Theo's block area observation is laid out here with its setting, the timed running record and the interpretation, plus notes in the margin on keeping description apart.
How do you write a running record for DNRS 6800 Week 2?
Note the time and describe what the child does and says in plain words, with no labels about feelings or ability. Interpretation comes afterward in its own section.