Development of 4th and 5th Grade Learners Across Contexts ED. T&L 694.20 (on-line) Summer 2009

1. Development of 4th and 5th Grade Learners Across Contexts ED. T&L 694.20 (on-line) Summer 2009 Caleb Arthur Final Project

2. Outline Educational Theorists Physical Development Ideas to Use in the Classroom Top 10 Things Teachers Need To Know… The Behaviorist Theory The Interactionist Theory The Nativist Theory Physical, Cognitive, and Language Development Conclusion

3. Educational Theorists - Albert Bandura - UrieBronfenbrenner - Erik Erikson - Jean Piaget - B.F. Skinner - Lev Vygotsky

4. Albert Bandura • A part of Bandura’s social learning theory he makes aware the fact that students will start to become more selective in what they imitate.  For example, a student idolizes LeBron James, therefore they will try to imitate him (wearing a headband during basketball games, wearing baggy shorts, etc.).  This can also take place on a smaller scale (looking up to a person a couple grades above and trying to dress like him or her).  • Bandura also discusses personal standards that children set for themselves. If a child looks at him or her self with negativity, the child will develop low self esteem and low self-belief.  As a teacher I should be positive and give positive remarks to my students so that they achieve a high self esteem for themselves.

5. UrieBrofenbrenner • Students will become who they will be the rest of their lives based on the microsystem that they grow up in.  They will develop what matters to them and what doesn’t matter.  Their surroundings will shape their attitudes towards people and other things in life.  I should have positive influences towards my students so that they develop good habits in life.  I will be responsible for their learning for one school year so I affect the student in that way also. • The mesosystem includes the community the student is involved in.  The community includes the parents, peers, neighbors, and child-care centers that the student (child) is involved in.  As a teacher, I will need to understand where the student is coming from and how I can help develop the child.  I also must be willing to work with the mesosystem of the student (parents, community, etc.)

6. Erik Erikson • Industry versus inferiority is when children (at school) develop the capacity to work with others.  The period of development takes place from age 6 to 11.  The children also learn how to cooperate.  I am going to be certified to teach students from Kindergarten through 5th grade.  The ages normally range in these grades from 5-11, so I will be dealing with the industry and inferiority psychological stage of children.  I should make sure I am aware of students struggling with the inferior stage of development.  Inferiority develops when negative experiences at home, at school, or with peers lead to feelings of incompetence and uncertainty.  Through performing my senior block at Lima Heritage Elementary School in Lima, Ohio I developed a passion for inner city children.  I learned that there are more students at risk for negative inferior developments due to the students’ home lives.  I want to build and develop my classroom so that it is conducive to learning and developing skills that students can use later in life with great effectiveness.  I want my students to develop good cooperation and teamwork skills while in my classroom.  • Identity versus identity confusion is when children during their adolescence stages start to wonder who they really are.  Children start to choose their own values and interests.  I think as a teacher, I should make sure that my students choose appropriate values and interests.  I know when I was going through this stage; I wanted to be a pilot.  In high school I developed other interests and started to be interested in teaching.  I think I should encourage students to become open-minded and have big goals for their future.  I don’t want any of my students to believe that just because his/her parents work minimum wage jobs doesn’t mean they have to go up to become what their parents were.  They should have their own dreams and aspirations to become whatever they want to become.  I think I should place effort towards this psychological stage so that my future students develop a good outlook on life and don’t feel they have to accept something just because it’s the way it has always been.  I should also make good effort in showing my future students how to make good choices and that I (the teacher) will always be there to support them if they need anything.

7. Jean Piaget • Concrete Operational – Children start to become more logical in their thinking.  This stage affects children from age seven to 11.  Children also become more organized and less chaotic (they start to plan things out).  I saw a big difference between my FEEP and senior block field experience.  I noticed during my FEEP that the first grade class was unorganized and it seemed impossible for the students to stay on track for more than five minutes.  During my senior block, the second grade I observed had much more organization than the first grade class.  As a teacher, I should know this now and expect it.  I should expect first graders to be less organized and focused than second graders. • Formal Operational – As with everyone, people mature at different rates, but the formal operational stage usually affects children of eleven years or older.  During this stage, children can begin to examine things with reason and understanding.  They are able to think of all possible outcomes in a mathematic and scientific problem.  When I become a teacher, I should be reminded to encourage the students to think for themselves and not settle for the simplest of answers.  I think effort plays a big part in whether or not students develop good reasoning skills, so as a teacher I will be a big proponent of requiring quality student effort in the classroom.

8. B.F. Skinner • Operant conditioning theory – I feel reinforcers are important because through my field experiences I think students respond in a more positive way when they receive positive reinforcers and/or positive encouragement.  During senior block I developed a Personal Discipline Plan and in it – I have many positive reinforcers to help encourage and develop my future students. • Operant condition theory – I agree with B.F. Skinner on that behaviors can be decreased using punishment.  Punishment usually results a student losing some kind of privilege (loss of recess, call home, etc.).  In giving punishment the student is learning that he/she should not do that or more punishment will follow.  Punishment is put into effect to help maintain an organized classroom.

9. Lev Vygotsky • Vygotsky’ssociocultural theory explains that people need to be concerned with other peoples’ backgrounds and cultures and to not have biases and pre-conceived notions.  As teachers, I think it is important that we understand where every one of our students come from. I think we should be careful in planning our lessons, so that we don’t bring up any issues that would or could result in a conflict.  • Another issue that Vygotsky brings up is communication between adults and children.  I believe the better we communicate with the student, the better the student will learn to develop better communication skills.  Communication skills can help so many other skills in life.  Good communication between adults and children also help children develop complex thought processes and positive adult/children experiences.  I will make sure that I will communicate clearly and effectively to my future students so that they learn and develop the skills necessary for the rest of their lives.

10. Physical Development I believe an important aspect during the developmental stages of males and females from 8-11 years of age is (child) obesity.  Statistics show that children have been gaining more weight at a more rapid pace than ever in history.  I believe a good way to instruct ways to put a decline to childhood obesity is to encourage good eating habits and active play.  Just as responsible as the child - I believe parents play an enormous role in the development of body weight.  We need to stress parents not to take their children to fast food all of the time and to develop good eating habits (fruits, vegetables, dairy, etc.).  Also, I need to make aware the role of video games and other forms of entertainment and how they also play a huge role in childhood obesity.  I believe video games have played an enormous role in the childhood obesity problem we are currently facing.  In my classroom, I will have posters of the food pyramid and other quality information regarding good nutrition.  I will encourage my students by not handing out damaging candy (chocolate, etc.).  Males and Females - during the developmental stages from ages 8-11 go through rapid and dramatic changes.  Self-esteem can be gained and lost during this time period.  Females - tend to grow at a faster rate.  They usually hit puberty quicker than males do, which can sometimes lead to insecurity.  Females not hitting puberty also may face self-esteem issues.  Males - usually have a high range of heights.  One male could be 6', while another 4'6".  Males and Females - weight ranges have increased since 1990.  Child obesity is a huge problem the world is facing with currently.  Males and Females - youth sports start to take a huge part of most children's lives.  Children from 8-11 start to show improvements in gross motor skills (jumping higher, running faster, moving quicker, and better balance).  Males and Females - depending on growth spurts, those who have a large increase in height during this time sometimes may lose some balance qualities - also known as being a klutz. 

11. Physical Development Timeline for 8-11 year olds.

12. Current Statistics of Children Children integrate previously acquired skills into more complex, dynamic systems of action.  There are sex differences in motor skills.  Size and strength contribute to boys' superior athletic performance in adolescence, physical growth cannot fully account for boys' childhood advantage. Throughout this time period both boys and girls experience rapid growing of hands,arms, feet and legs which may look disproportionate. Self-esteem can be gained and lossed during this time period. Females tend to grow at a faster rate.  They usually hit puberty quicker than males do, which can sometimes lead to insecurity.  Females not hitting puberty also may face self-esteem issues. In both males and females – weight ranges have increased since 1990.  Child obesity is a huge problem the world is facing with currently. 

13. Ideas to Use in the Classroom In a classroom, teachers can use creative thinking to promote physical development and health within their lessons.  An example of this is something I had a teacher do for her math class. Jason had an idea from his own personal school days–we would play "problem ball".  In this, the teacher would start by throwing a NERF ball out to the class.  The person who caught the ball was then asked a question.  If they got it right, their team got a point, and then they would have to throw it to someone on the other team.  If you did not catch it, then you lost your turn, and the other team got a question.  This was definitely an activity that promoted physical movement as well as problem solving in a class you would not typically find that.

14. Ideas to Use in the Classroom Another activity would be to discuss nutrition and the food pyramid. Kids at this age need more iron and calcium in their diets and are also exposed to too much fast food.  Wecould have our future classes write a cookbook of healthy, low cost recipes tying in language arts and math.  We could also have a discussion about being active and come up with a list of different ways to exercise. We would also discuss how many hours of TV the students watch and make a bar graph.  Then maybe make a class goal to get more exercise and watch less TV.

15. What Will We Do as Teachers? We, teachers, need to make a goal to incorporate these ideas into our future classrooms. If we don’t make an effort to get our future students more active and more knowledgeable to the child obesity problem: it will just keep getting worse. We should keep our students physically active and have them practice good eating habits.

16. Top 10 Things Teachers Need To Know About Promoting Cognitive Development Of 4th and 5th Grade Learners 1. Teachers need to implement discovery learning meaning using a wide array of materials to meet varying stages of development.  Piaget’s constructivist approach believes that the learning environment must allow for the manipulation of objects and interactions with other children and adults. 2. Teachers need to allow for peer collaboration.  Students should be placed in groups of varying abilities for cooperative learning. By having more “expert” students assist less “expert” students both benefit in achievement and self-esteem.  Vygotsky believed relationships between peers and adults are critical to students’ development. 3. Teachers need to model self-regulation strategies and other strategies for students.  Siegler’s model of strategy choice explains that when children have to make decisions they use a variety of strategies and pick them based on speed and accuracy.  During math, teachers can have students use various strategies to helps students understand the concepts better.  Teachers should also have students share their reasoning for why they used a certain strategy to make sure they understand it.  During science, teachers can have students form hypotheses and perform experiments and explain the results and their reasoning for their findings.  Teachers should have students work on their comprehension skills during reading by having students use various comprehension strategies.

17. Top 10 Things Teachers Need To Know About Promoting Cognitive Development Of 4th and 5th Grade Learners 4. Teachers need to differentiate their instruction to meet the needs and intelligences of all their students.  Gardner believed that there are eight different types of intelligences such as linguistic, logico-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, interpersonal and intrapersonal therefore, not all students have the same strengthens, weakness and needs.  Teachers cannot just teach towards the middle but include in their planning all abilities. 5. Teachers need allow for scaffolding of the students’ learning.  Scaffolding is adjusting support during a lesson to fit the students developmental level, breaking tasks into manageable units, questioning, prompting, suggesting and slowly withdrawing support leaving the student responsible.  According to Vygotsky, children are actively looking for knowledge and their learning takes place in the zone of proximal development which is a range of tasks too difficult for students to do on their own but can be done with the help of an adult or other skilled peers.

18. Top 10 Things Teachers Need To Know About Promoting Cognitive Development Of 4th and 5th Grade Learners 6. Teachers need to practice culturally responsive teaching.  Vygotsky believed that children learn through both social interactions and their culture.  Every student comes from a different culture thus bringing with them various, unique experiences therefore, teachers need to aware of those differences and plan their lessons accordingly. 7. Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to develop their logical and analytical thinking skills.  According to Piaget, 4th and 5th graders are in the concrete operational stage therefore their thinking is becoming more organized and logical. 8. Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to develop their memory.  According to the Information Processing Theorist, children develop conceptual structures that help them start to think in more complex and advance ways.  Children ages 7-11 years old start to gain a better attention span and better organization.   The children start to store things in their brain meaning their memory is expanding and can hold more than before.

19. Top 10 Things Teachers Need To Know About Promoting Cognitive Development Of 4th and 5th Grade Learners 9. Teachers need to be aware of each students’ zone of proximal development.  In addition, teachers need to create appropriate activities and give support that will meet their students’ current needs as well as plan for their future needs.  Vygotsky believed that the zone of proximal development was the gap between the student’s actual development and what the student could potential achieve with academic help. 10. Teachers need to practice holistic teaching by designing lessons that support the whole child including the cognitive, affective and physical domains.  Gardner believed there were multiple intelligences: linguistic, logico-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, interpersonal and intrapersonal which includes the affective and physical domains.  Strensbergtriarchic theory also requires holistic teaching because he believed there were 3 broad, types of intelligences: analytical, creative and practical.  Carroll’s hierarchical model of intelligence which the top has general intelligence then the second tier has eight abilities such as fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, general memory and learning, broad visual perception, broad auditory perception, broad retrieval ability, broad cognitive speediness and processing speed also requires holistic teaching.  The third tier has narrow abilities which are behaviors that are shown as result from the second tier.  Carroll’s theory implies that teachers need to teach holistically by making sure to have a variety of lessons and activities that allows for students to use all the different broad abilities that he mentioned.

20. The Behaviorist, Interactionist, and Nativist Theories

21. The Behaviorist Theory The Behaviorist Perspective • B.F. Skinner said that language is acquired like any other behavior - through operant conditioing.  If a child 'babbles' a word such as ball-ball-ball-ba-ll-balla - the parent soon will hold a ball in front of the child inforcing to the child that the ball is a ball.  Proponents of this perspective also believe that imitation plays a huge role for children learning a language.  The imitation by the child is directly from the adult (parent).  I think that these ideas are very similar to the Interaction theorists because they both involve the interaction with other (adult to the child and so on).  The early stages are important for the child when learning a new language.  This perspective, however, doesn't really help language development.  Instead of learning specific sentences, children learn and develop a working knowledge of language rules.  The interaction between adults and children is very important.

22. The Nativist Theory The Nativist Perspective • Noam Chomsky believes that children learn much of what they need to know on their own.  By observation they learn how a word sounds and what that word means.  The Nativist Perspective believes that children's brains do most of the work when learning a new language.  They believe that children have the ability to readily produce and understand certain words and sentences.  They believe that all children have a language acquisition device (LAD) - this is an innate system that permits them, as soon as they have acquired sufficient vocabulary, to combine words into grammatically consistant, novel utterances and to understand the meaning of sentences they hear.  The main thing that they believe is that every human being is born with the ability and brain (power) to learn and understand a language.  This perspective differs from the behavorist and interactionist because it really involves no interaction between humans.

23. The Interactionist Theory The Interactionist Perspective • The Interactionist Theory is the newest one of the three.  It seems to be more or less a combination of the two perspectives.  This perspective takes some ideas from both theories and at the same time doesn't take some ideas.  Followers of this perspective use both the nativist and behavorists ideas to prove how and why children acquire language.  They have an emphasis on interactions between inner predispositions and environmental influences.  The artificial neural networks develop very quickly during childhood so hearing, learning, doing is very important if the child is to learn the language well.  There is a small window for the child to learn a language - it would take longer for the child to learn the language when those neural networks start to slow down.

24. Physical, Cognitive and Language Development How do families, peers, media, and schools influence the physical, cognitive, and language development of 4th and 5th grade learners?

25. How does family effect development. Family • In the United States, a child comes to school at the age of around five.  Before coming to school, the child obviously lives with his/her family.  While living his their family they learn many things that help develop their character, morals, and self-being.  With good guidance from parents, other siblings, extended family (aunts/uncles/grandpas/grandmas) a child will develop language, skills, and social and moral values of their culture.  Socialization also plays a big role within the family.  Parents start to socialize with their children sometime during the second year.  As children get older, parents socialize more and more because they get a response from the child.  As the child gets older, the parents can choose what type of discipline to use.  Will they be harsh (grounding) or will they try and be the child's 'buddy'?  Through my experiences, I believe that parents who are buddies with their children rather than a disciplinerian have more troubles with their children the older they get.  My parents were disciplinarians and I believe that has help our relationship and has helped my character develop to where I am now.  I know some of my friends and that their parents were of the buddy type.  Now, those friends do not want to grow up.  One is still living with his parents and the other has dropped out of school.  If parents are not disciplinarians their children will less likely quit something (my opinion).

26. How do peers effect development. Peers • Peer sociability begins early in most cultures.  Around age 2, toddlers start using words to talk about and influence a peer's behavior (p. 598).  If a child plays with the same child as a young child, the two will both somewhat develop the same character and ideas.  If the two are allowed to get away with stuff (doing stuff wrong - break things, fight, etc.) they will both develop the sense that it is okay.  If both children are not allowed to get away with these things they will both develop the sense that it is wrong.  During this 'play' time children develop good fine and gross motor skills. 

27. How does media effect development. Media • Especially now in the 21 century, children have a large amount of media they can attain.  Children can now watch things on TV and the computer with a touch of a button.  They can see what people are doing at every second of the day (twitter, facebook).  They learn so much from the media (and largely it is bad for them).  Stereotypes can be made very easily through media.  Violence in movies and on TV can hurt the development of a child.  If they are exposed to it at an early age with regard they will develop a sense that violence is okay (it is okay to get in a fight at school).  They learn this through media and they have no regard for any consequences.  The book states that from 6 am to 11 pm over 50 percent of the tv shows have some form of violence.  By experience, I have noticed that language has gotten worse - it seems like no one cares anymore whether or not a child curses or uses God's name is vein.  Most children today, are exposed and see/hear this every single day.  Media needs to be used in a different manor in order for it to help development of a child.  I think the biggest thing for media to be used in a proper way is to have the parents use the media in ways they want their children to use it.  If parents are watching a violent movie and they let their child watch it with them - what is the child learning?  If the child sees the parents using the computer in a wrong way - what do you think the child will do?  

28. How do schools effect development. Schools • Children learn how to interact with their peers at school better than anywhere else.  Usually, the teacher disciplines a child if they do something wrong.  If a child gets in a fight - there are consequences.  At home a child may get in a fight with their sibling and the parent doesn't do anything.  I think children develop the most at school because they are there nearly 7-8 hours a day.  They learn how to work together.  They learn how to use the computer properly.  They learn many things that homes (some) usually cannot.  Children learn a schedule and how to keep on it.  They learn responsibility and how to manage their work.  They learn how to socialize with kids their age and adults (teachers).  Children need to learn from an early age how to do these things because by the fourth and fifth grade many students will be unable to break the bad habits they formed prior such as: improper computer usage, unable to work together, etc.

29. Conclusion I enjoyed Development of 4th and 5th Grade Learners Across Contexts (ED. T&L 694.20). I think the assignments that helped me learn the most were the Annenberg Videos. In prior classes, I had already learned about the educational theorists, so that was a review. I enjoyed learned how to use wordpress - although if something were to be dropped from the course, I would say drop wordpress because it seems like all we had to do was copy and paste our discussion questions to our wordpress site. Thanks.

30. The End Caleb Arthur