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