Middle Childhood Flashcards
Growth and Body Changes
• Children grow more slowly during middle
childhood than in early childhood or in
adolescence.
- During middle childhood, individuals look slimmer because as they grow taller, their body proportions change.
- Increased lung capacity, endurance, speed
Motor Development
- Influenced by nutrition and heredity
- With slowed growth, children become much more comfortable with their bodies and begin to develop better coordination
- Minimal gender differences; girls slightly more flexible; boys slightly more forearm strength (consider influence of experience)
Motor Development Milestones
- 6 years: moves constantly, even when trying to sit still, rides a bike, swims, swings a bat, enjoys art and making projects, writing, cuts paper into shapes, ties shoes
- 7 years: uses knife and fork, holds pencil with tight grip near tip, writing uniform letters
- 8 years: enjoys team activities and games, copies from blackboard well, increased agility, speed, strength, endless energy
9-10 years: throws a ball accurately, writing refined, team sports, cooking, woodworking, needlework, detailed drawings, girls grow rapidly- some with hormonal changes
11-12 years:
- organized activities like karate and team sports, swimming, model-building, playing an instrument,
- needs outlet for energy during school day, feel invincible, need to develop a healthy lifestyle, starting to experience pre-puberty growth spurt
Brain Development
- Memory span increases
- Faster response time
- Adult vs Child brain
- Plasticity
- Consider effects of trauma, abuse, neglect
Gender Differences
•Who has higher verbal abilities?
•Who has higher spatial abilities?
- Females are wired for empathy and socialization
- Males wired for spatial and mathematical
•What does this mean for STEM programs?
What is happening to recess?
- Under pressure to improve standardized test scores (Nation at Risk), many schools are cutting back recess or eliminating it altogether
- Some new schools are being built without playgrounds!
- May give students “re-energizing” activities, but they are NOT play! (think about leisure vs. recreation)
Obesity
- Body mass index at or above 25
- Increase in prevalence of overweight children since 1970
- High cholesterol and blood pressure
- May affect psychosocial well- being
- High caloric intake, low activity and rarely genetic and thyroid factors
Cognitive Development
During the elementary years:
- children become more skilled at processing information
- thinking becomes more rational and logical
- distinguish among reality and fiction
Development of more powerful and more complex executive functions- can….
can select, sequence, evaluate, revise & monitor the effectiveness of their problem solving plans & behaviors
**scaffolding and zone of proximal development
Piaget’s concrete operations
Paiget’s concrete operations- children are able to solve conservation problems.
•Adding something results in more, objects can belong to more than 1 category
•Metacognition develops: become aware of their own thinking, reflect on their performance
•Concrete Operations: rely on the here and now, not abstract. Conservation develops (quantity vs. appearance). Decenter, understand transformations, reversibility, classification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=j4lvQfhuNmg
•Horizontal Decalage- conservation in steps
Metacognition
: become aware of their own thinking, reflect on their performance
develops during Piaget’s concrete operations
Concrete Operations:
rely on the here and now, not abstract. Conservation develops (quantity vs. appearance). Decenter, understand transformations, reversibility, classification.
Piaget
Horizontal Decalage-
conservation in steps
Piaget concrete operations
Language development
- Begin studying grammar
* Rules that apply to language - Pragmatic language
* Modify voice, volume and even vocabulary based on context of interaction - ESL-English as Second Language
* Bilingual education
* Total immersion
* Two way bilingual programs/dual language programs
Psychometric Testing
•Psychometric testing
is any standardized (large sample of students)
procedure for measuring intelligence, memory,
aptitude, or personality
Stanford Binet orWeschler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV)
o most standardized assessments use a mean
of 100 and standard deviation of 15
o results often used in development of an
individualized education plan (IEP)