Week 5- Notes
Piaget and Development in
Middle and Late Childhood
Piaget’s concrete operational stage lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age.
Concrete operations: reversible mental actions applied to real, concrete objects.
• Child is able to focus on several characteristics at once (making a
sandwich)
Seriation: the ability to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension.
• Example: Lining straws up in order of length.
Transitivity: the ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions.
• Example: Analyzing a crime investigation
Piaget’s Concrete Operation Stage
[Link]
Applications to Education
Some ideas in Piaget’s theory that can be applied to teaching children:
• Take a constructivist approach.
• Facilitate rather than direct learning.
The Nature of Children’s
Information Processing
In middle and late childhood, most children dramatically improve their ability to sustain and
control attention.
Memory
Long-term memory: a relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory.
Short-term or working memory: a kind of mental “workbench.”
Knowledge and expertise play a role.
Experts have extensive knowledge in a particular content area.
• Older children usually have more expertise than younger children.
• Affects their ability to remember, to reason, and to solve
problems.
Strategies, or control processes: deliberate mental activities to improve the processing of
information.
Elaboration: engaging in more extensive processing of information; memory benefits.
Fuzzy trace theory: memory is best understood by considering two types of representations,
verbatim memory trace and gist.
Autobiographical memory: memory of significant events and experiences.
Improving Children’s Memory
Strategies to adopt when guiding children to remember information:
• Assist them to organize information, expand their information, and develop images of
the information.
Thinking
Executive function encompasses a number of higher-level cognitive processes
Critical thinking: thinking reflectively and productively and evaluating evidence.
Mindfulness:
Creative thinking: thinking in novel and unusual ways that produce unique solutions.
Convergent thinking:
Divergent thinking:
Scientific thinking:
Children's reasoning: is often based on limited personal experiences and incomplete
understanding of the world
Metacognition: thinking about your thinking
[Link]
Reading and Writing
How should children be taught to read?
Phonics approach:
Whole-language approach:
Becoming a good reader means learning to read fluently.
Vocabulary Development: Expand vocabulary by reading aloud and discussing new words. Use
visuals and context to help them understand meanings.
Fluency:
Comprehension: Ask questions about the story, encourage predictions, and discuss characters
and plots to enhance understanding. Teach children to summarize what they've read.
Routine:
Support and Encouragement: Celebrate progress, no matter how small, and provide a
supportive environment. Be patient and responsive to their individual needs.
How do writing skills develop?
Starting the process:
• 2 to 3 years old: scribbles.
• 4 years old: printing one’s first name.
• 5 years old: reproduce letters and copy short words.
Becoming a good writer takes years and lots of practice.
Teachers play a critical role in students’ development of writing skills.
Fine Motor Skills: Begin with activities that strengthen fine motor skills.
Letter Formation:
Phonemic Awareness:
Word Building: Start with simple words. Use word families (like "cat," "hat," "bat") to show
how changing one letter changes the word.
Sentence Structure:
Storytelling:
Changes in Vocabulary, Grammar,
and Metalinguistic Awareness
Children gain new skills in school.
• Begin to categorize vocabulary (grouping words or family words)
• Mastery increases with age.
Metalinguistic awareness: knowledge about language.
Dual-Language and
Second-Language Learning
Sensitive periods for learning a second language likely vary across language systems.
Bilingualism: ability to speak two languages.