Cognitive language and literacy development

CLASS 10

                        COGNITIVE LANGUAGE AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

During the class, we spoke about the importance for parents to read books

Everyday to their kid.

Two stories were read : “Mama, do you love me ? “written by Barbara M Joose and “Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus “by Mo Willems.

These books get the kids to respond. By showing them the cover , we could ask open questions such as “What is the pigeon dreaming about ?”

The child is willing to answer and proud to feel that he is a reader as he has comprehended what the story is about.

Reading is about comprehension and understanding.

How do we get them to become readers ? We know that from 1 to to 3 they learn to read, at 4 and up they read to learn and by the end of 3rd grade they become proficient readers.

We spoke about some latin words .For instance in the verb educate, the radical duc        signifies to lead out, comes from the latin verb ducare.        

In the chapter of the book , three theories emerge.

The first one concerns Piaget (1896-1980).According to his theory based on constructivism, children’s thinking differs from adult thinking not only quantitatively but qualitatively. He distinguished        4 stages of human intellectual development that determine what a child can learn and how he learns.

• From 0 to 2 years old: it is the sensori-motor stage . Children learn through their senses and movement. They put toys in their mouth as there are sense receptors in this area. There is an object permanence (if the child does not see it, it means that it does not exist usually until the age of 7 to 9 months).
• From 3 to 7 years old: it is the preoperational stage which is a prelogical stage that can be divided into two sub-stages: the pre-conceptual (3-4 years old) and the intuitive (4-7 y), the child still relies on the use of his senses but language comes along to represent things that are not visible.

His world is egocentric and everyone should do exactly the same .He speaks to himself loudly (egocentric speech)and gives qualities to inanimate objects (animism). At the end of this stage, the child uses a socialized speech which takes into account the perspective of the listener.

• From 7 to 11 years old : it is the concrete operation stage , the child develops the concept of number, relationship and understands the rules Now things have a literal meaning for them.
• From 11 and more: it is the formal operation stage, the child thinks in terms of concepts, abstractions rather than relying on concrete or real objects.

What helps a child move from one stage to another are the processes of maturation, experience, social interaction that all combined lead to equilibration (mental structure).

The conservation state is when a kid realizes that a property such as number, length or amount remains the same even if changes in shape or position appear.

There is as well a reversibility state when any change of position or shape can be reversed to its original shape or position.

Piaget keeps the child curious and recommends not to give all the answers: allow the kid to explore .This can be done in a responsive environment where the kid is bound to be engaged (table with manipulative objects, Play Doh, water play with toys, provide balls of different sizes ). Thought comes from actions not from words.

They learn best from concrete experience than from “hearing about”.For their reasoning, questions like “I wonder what would happen if”, are better than statements of facts.

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