School Age (6-8) Flashcards
Physical Changes in Middle Childhood
- physical changes are more difficult to observe directly (but are just as impressive as those in early childhood)
Motor Development in Middle Childhood
- growth patterns: 5cm- 8cm in height and 2.75 kg each year
- large muscle coordination continues to improve
- children show increases in strength and speed, and hand-eye coordination
- increasingly good fine motor coordination makes writing drawing, cutting and other skills possible
What causes the improvement in fine motor skills and hand eye coordination?
- Steady increase in the myelinization of neural axons across the cerebral cortex that affects sensory and motor areas
Spatial Perception
L/R
- right hemisphere lateralization increases spatial perception
- Starts in preschool (for others, it starts at age 6-9)
- Depends on exposure
- right- left orientation improves
- males score better than females on spatial orientation
- not a sex based difference; due to boys’ early play preferences enhance this ability
- visual experience helps in the development of spatial perception
- They can orient themselves
- Understand what things fit together and what they don’t
Obese children are predisposed to developing ______________ later in life.
- type II diabetes
- cancer
- cardiovascular disease
- 1/2 overweight children become overweight adults
- The trajectory that kids start on is likely to be the trajectory they continue on
What is the major flaw with the BMI Scale?
- Does not distinguish between different types of weight (ie. Fat vs muscle)
- People who are very muscular can be obese in terms of the BMI
- Accurate 80% of the time (in terms of stats, not great)
BMI Scale
Underweight > 18.5
Normal = 18.5-24.9
Overweight = 25.0-29.9
Obese = 30.0+
Physical Activity
- 1/4 of children fail to meet the recommended daily duration of PA (60 minutes
a day or more of moderate to vigorous intensity) - 37% exceed the sedentary behaviour recommendation (no more than two hours per
day of screen time or other passive non-school
related activities)
Why do children not meed daily PA requirements?
- Tech is more prevalent
- Learning in school is digital
- Notions of stranger danger
○ As news spreads faster, parents are more worried about abductions - children are not going out to play anymore
○ Now we are trying to find ways to keep them engage while inside: answer is technology
During COVID-19, why are females and upper-class families less active?
- Decrease in PA(females more then males)
- greater impact in upper/middle income families, with no difference in low and middle income families
- Increase in screen time (males more than females)
Why decreased PA in females??
- Girls are less active than boys
○ There is now a bigger difference when you cut out the extracurricular activities
Why increase in screen time for males> females?
- At 6-8, more boys are playing video games than girls
Most days of emergency remote schooling in Ontario compared to all other provinces in Ontario caused:
- family, economic, and social stress
○ One of the caregivers/parents has to work with the child- At age 6-8, you are learning to read, so they can not read to learn (which is what had to be done during covid-19)
7 C’s of Resilience
1) Competence - completing task effectively,
2) Confidence - belief in ones own ability, derived from opportunities of experiencing success
3) Coping - skills and strategies to deal with stress and challenges
4) Control - knowing you have control of your life and environment; your decision-making a difference in the outcome
5) Character - solid set of moral, values, and caring attitude
6) Connection - knowing one is not alone during times of struggle
7) Contribution - understanding importance of your contribution to the world; serve as source of purpose and motivation
- These can be put into 2 constructs
- things they can control
- External factors that are outside of their control
- ex. Ability to control their environment
Discourse around COVID-19
they said:
- We are all in this together
- Resilience
BUT,
- are 6-8 years olds even being capable of being resilient
- Do kids gave the knowledge to put these 7 pieces together
- Kids have not gone through life experiences to build these skills
- Resilience is born out of adversity (which children have not faced yet)
What is the problem with applying this conceptualization of resilience to school-aged children?
- it is not in their control
??????
SOAR Study
Resilience on a Continuum
- Parents definition mirrored the child’s definition
- Children viewed resilience on a continuum largely dependent ton how much control they felt over their lives
- 4 definitions of resilience
1) Surviving - they were fighting to be able to survive (ex. survive not being able to go outside or seing friends)
2) Persevering - they kept trying but did not succeed
3) Recovering - they kept trying and there was success at the end
4) Thrive - saw it as an opportunity to work hard
Cognitive Changes
Concrete Operational Stage (Piaget)
- decentration: thinking that takes multiple variables into account
- reversibility: understanding that both physical actions and mental operations can be reversed
- Increased inductive logic allows child to go from a specific experience to a general principle
ex. observing that the sun has risen every day leads to the inductive conclusion that the sun will rise tomorrow - deductive logic is still not strong
Information Processing Skills
- memory function continues to improve
- processing efficiency increases steadily with age (ability to make efficient
use of short-term memory capacity)
Executive Processes
- advancing information-processing skills: involves devising and carrying out
strategies for remembering and solving problems based on knowing how the mind
works (metacognition) - executive processes are improved with the use of common information processing strategies
2 Examples of how Children Develop Higher Level Functions
1) Rehearsal
- mental or vocal repetition
2) Organization
- grouping ideas, objects or words into clusters
to help in remembering them - this strategy is more applicable to knowledge you have experience with
ex. mind mapping
How is Language developed
Master basic grammar
- basic grammar is mastered by 5/6 years and
pronunciation in native language
- If we do not have good pronunciation by grade 1, schools suggest use of speech pathologists
Expansion
- children learn to maintain the topic of conversation, create
unambiguous sentences, and speak politely or persuasively
- They have learned enough about language that they can be conversational in meaningful ways
What is Linguistics??
i dont think i have to know this
How do children become literate
Literacy: the ability to read and write ( the focus of education b/w ages 6-12)
- In order for them to become literate, they need phonological awareness
○ You can interpret meaning of one word with the use of other words in a sentence - Comprehension strategies are needed: sound-symbol
connection assists writing and spelling, grammar and
writing techniques must be taught (i.e. period and
capitalization)- In early learners, comprehension strategies are needed
○ Bc they don’t hear (understand) what they read
- In early learners, comprehension strategies are needed
