Cognitive Development Early Childhood – Part 3

1. Cognitive DevelopmentEarly Childhood – Part 3 Laura Taddei April 26, 2008 PQAS #CI-0036000 K1 C3 01

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. More Limitations of Preoperational Thinking • Irreversibility – unable to reverse thinking to reconstruct mentally the actions that got them to final point. • Concreteness • Faulty Reasoning • Symbolic Thought

6. 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

7. What Are the Three Views Of the Cognitive Changes That Occur in Early Childhood? 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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.

13. 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?

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. Classify, classify, classify • Classification is a great pre-number concept that children need exposure to • Classification activities will help support early numeracy concepts

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Materials to use • Household items are great to use for activities like one to one correspondence • Gather up toys, buttons, small bowls, etc • Use language such as more than, less than, the same as

22. Conclusion • Questions/Comments • Please 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