Cognitive Development Early Childhood – Part 3
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Transcript of Cognitive Development Early Childhood – Part 3
Cognitive DevelopmentEarly Childhood – Part 3
Laura TaddeiApril 26, 2008
PQAS #CI-0036000K1 C3 01
Learning Objectives
Participants will discuss the characteristics of preoperational thinking
Participants will describe teacher behaviors in supporting play
Participants will discuss great beginnings for early development of math concepts
What is Preoperational Thinking?
According to Piaget, this occurs between the ages of 2 to 7
This is a time before children are able to make truly logical connections to their thinking
Two distinct stages
Limitations of Preoperational Thinking:
Centration – tendency of preoperational thinkers to focus attention on one aspect of a situation while ignoring all others Classic example – conservation
Egocentrism – part of an inability to center on more than one aspect of a situation at a time – understanding other’s feelings or views is difficult
More Limitations of Preoperational Thinking
Irreversibility – unable to reverse thinking to reconstruct mentally the actions that got them to final point.
Concreteness Faulty ReasoningSymbolic Thought
Constructivism
Theory lies close to the heart of developmentally appropriate practice
Refers to ideas of Piaget, Vygotsky and his sociocultural constructivist theory
Intelligence and understanding are actively created or constructed by the individual through interaction with the environment
Vygotsky’s Theory of Development
Social constructionist approach Children actively construct their knowledge
and understanding
Ways of thinking, understanding develop primarily through social interaction
Cognitive development depends on tools provided by society
Minds shaped by cultural context
What Are the Three Views Of the Cognitive Changes That Occur in Early Childhood?
The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Lower limit: what child can achieve independently
Upper limit: what can be achieved with guidance and assistance of adults or more skilled children
Captures child’s cognitive skills in process of maturing
What Are the Three Views Of the Cognitive Changes That Occur in Early Childhood?
Scaffolding and Dialogue
Scaffolding: changing level of support over course of teaching session to fit child’s current performance level Dialogue
Guided participation: stretch and support children’s understanding of skills
What Are the Three Views Of the Cognitive Changes That Occur in Early Childhood?
Teachers’ Roles in Providing for Play
Criteria for play – spontaneous and freely chosen – teachers still have specific roles in supporting play
Many teacher roles are played behind the scenes – think of examples of this
Activity: Creator of the environment
Participants will work in pairs to decide how they will create an environment to support play for preschoolers.
Pairs will then share what they discussed with another group of two
Observer and Recorder
Questions a teacher can ask while watching a child at play What is happening for the child in the play? What is the child’s agenda? Does the child have the skills and materials
needed to accomplish the intent?Observing is the only way to make
appropriate decisions regarding curriculum and materials.
What would you do when?
Your director insists that students create an art project every day to take home. Many of the students are not interested in doing this every day and you end up forcing them to create this art project. Page 343
Parents and administration sometimes do not understand the value of play. What are some things you can do to help them understand that doing the above is not developmentally appropriate?
Pre-Number Concepts
Critical in developing positive attitudes about math at an early age
Special methods and activities will assist children in developing early math skills
Children need concrete materials to manipulate
Children need to learn math by doing before written numbers makes sense to them
When can children understand math?
As early as 2, children may say, one, two, three, but they rarely understand that the number refers to an item or set of items
Children do not have number conservation or number correspondence at this age
How can we engage children in math?
Measurements concepts is a great beginning – children enjoy saying they are “bigger” than their friend or taller than a bookshelf
Young children think they have more in a cup if their cup is taller
Children need guidance and opportunities for experimentation to construct their own understanding of math
Classify, classify, classify
Classification is a great pre-number concept that children need exposure to
Classification activities will help support early numeracy concepts
Activity – Creating a math activity
Work in groups to come up with an activity that will help young children understand math. Include age group activity is designed for Materials needed What the teacher will do What the child will do
Before Children Count
They need to match sets before they understand number conservation
If children are shown a pile of grapefruits and a pile of lemons, what will they think there is more of?
To help a child understand one to one correspondence, teacher should move one grapefruit, the child should move a lemon until there is none left of either
More Ideas
Draw a number of circles and put down a number of buttons for eyes. Ask the child if there are enough eyes for the faces and how can they find out. Repeat activity for mouths, noses
Use stickers to make a pattern on a page- classify by attributes. Arrange stickers in a close row and then in a wider set apart row – ask children if there are the same, more or less – they should match one to one
Materials to use
Household items are great to use for activities like one to one correspondence
Gather up toys, buttons, small bowls, etcUse language such as more than, less
than, the same as
Conclusion
Questions/CommentsPlease bring in to class next week an
activity or a book that you would use to promote early literacy in your classroom
Slides 7, 8, and 9 extracted from http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/premium/0073382604/instructor/567241/santrock12_ch09.ppt#367,15,Teaching Strategies April 20, 2008