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
What happened to literacy because of COVID?
- Literacy decreased
- Strategies that teachers use (which are highly repetitive), were not used in online school
- For many parents, they could not be involved in their children’s care
- Now, they are many kids in grade 4,5,6 who can not read
- Creating challenges in education system
What are the Multiple Intelligences according to Gardner?
1) Linguistic- ability to use language effectively
2) Logical/mathematical- numbers and logical problem solving
3) Musical- ability to appreciate and produce music
4) Spatial- ability to appreciate spatial relationships
5) Bodily/kinesthetic- ability to move in a coordinated way
6) Naturalist- ability to make fine discrimination among flora and fauna
or patterns and designs of human artifacts
7) Interpersonal- sensitivity to the behaviour, moods, and needs of others
8) Intrapersonal- ability to understand oneself
Sternbergs 3 Components of Intelligence
1) Contextual- knowing the right behaviour for specific
situation
2) Experiential- learning to give specific responses without
thinking about them
3) Componential- ability to come up with effective
strategies
Why is there no agreement on the measurement of intelligence?
Bc:
○ What is the ability of intelligence:
- to apply knowledge
- Ability to grow, learn, and adapt to new information
- Ability to retain knowledge
Why do we care about intelligence scores and why do schools use them?
- Track progress
- We don’t like change; we do the same things all the time bc we know it works
- Helps to categorize kids
○ Helps to identify learning disabilities
-schools use the to understanding learning differences to use for allocation of resources
○ They need to classify students who require more resources
Comparisons of overall IQ
scores for males and females:
do not reveal consistent
differences
Why is the # of children experiencing learning difficulties is higher today ?
- Now we are better able to categorize people into different types of learners
○ Ex. Before, it was the slow kids, and the other kids
○ Ex. Now, kids with adhd, kids with dyslexia, - small portion (10%) of the Canadian population
experiences learning problems that are a continuation of learning disabilities from
early childhood
What is an Exceptional Child?
- a child who has special learning needs
- students with disabilities and gifted students
- They can do perfectly well with/without teachers
- They understand well, but they can get really bored
- If they get bored in early education, they will be bored in later education
What are Program Accommodations?
- adjustments of teaching methods to help the child who has special needs achieve the
outcomes of the standard curriculum
What is the effect of IEP’s on school systems?
- Putting strain on teachers; there is a need for tailored education
Personality in Middle Childhood
- Freud believed that the challenge in middle childhood
was forming emotional bonds with peers - Believed that children were in latent period - when nothing happens
What s the “big 5” of personality traits?
- Openness - degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity
- Conscientiousness - tendency to be organized and dependable
- Extraversion - tendency to seek company of others and talk
- Agreeableness - measure of ones trusting and helpful nature
- Neuroticism - predisposition to psychological stress
Personality is”
Stable
- not only identifiable but also stable in middle childhood
Related to competence:
- table traits in middle childhood contribute to the development of feelings of
competence
Industry Vs. Inferiority
??????
How does self-concept develop?
- from 6-12 kids understanding
of themselves improves - They start to identify that they are different from their peers
- by the end of middle childhood children’s
self-concepts include 2 new components:
(1) psychological self and (2) valued self
What is the Psychological self
- understanding one’s stable
internal traits - psychological self becomes complex and abstract
- development of self-efficacy (belief in the ability to succeed)
What is the Valued self?
- global evaluation of one’s self-worth
- As they create an evolution of their self-worth, they look internally and feedback they get from family and friends
- self-esteem does not plummet quickly, it decreases over several years
What impacts self-esteem?
- Recognizing that other people have opinions about them
How do children understand others in childhood?
- 6 year old focuses on physical features (concrete)
- 8 year old focuses on inner traits (abstract)
What is the importance of Family Relationships?
- 6-8 year olds rely on their parents’ presence, support, and affections despite spending less time with them
Having meals together is the best predictor of…
- significantly better academic success
- fewer behavioural problems
- better psychological adjustment
- in their teen years, they are less likely to use maladaptive coping strategies
- better nutrition (in teen years)
Mediating variable:
- Not about eating dinner, but about conversing with others, are valuing time together which improves connection
Best Friend VS. Supportive
Best Friend - Has to do with children capacity to be in complex relationships
Supportive
- children are supportive of their friends
- They are able to clearly identity differences, but that does not impact anything (like it does in later age)
- Childs identity become connected by what their peers think and say to them
5 Stages of Friendship
0- Momentary Physical Interaction
1- One way Assistance
2- Fair-Weather Cooperation
3 - Intimate & Mutual Sharing
4- Autonomous Interdependence
0- Momentary Physical Interaction
1- One way Assistance
2- Fair-Weather Cooperation
What is Bullying?
Bullying - intentional and repetitive hurting of one person or group by another person/group
- Males tend to more physical forms of bullying - easy to be caught by teachers
- Females experience more emotional bullying - harder for educators to catch and harder to understand if it hits threshold of bullying
- people who are bullied show more signs of anxiety and depression
Bullying Interventions
1 - be resilient; its like asking a kid who does not know how to swim, to get across the pool by swimming
- Their self esteem is so destroyed, they don’t have the capacity to be resilient
2 - prevention; well kids cant control that themselves
- Interventions for bullying are lacking
- Nowa days, there is no break of bullying
○ Children get bullied at schools and get home to being bullied online - Whereas back then..
○ Children got bullied at school and had a break from bullying until the next school day
What causes aggression?
- Has to do with increased communication
○ As they learn how to speaks their feelings, they become more aggressive - physical aggression becomes less common as children
learn the cultural rules about when and how much it is
acceptable to display anger/aggression - at every age males show more physical aggression and
more assertiveness than do females - relational aggression aimed at damaging another’s self-esteem or peer relationships is more common in females
What is the relationship between TV and aggression?
- TV violence leads to high amounts of direct physical aggression in adults of both
genders and indirect aggression in females - People on the tv act as role models for us
Violence leads to…
- emotional desensitization
regarding violence
○ If you see someone getting shot every day all day, you wont think it’s a problem
○ Whereas if you are not exposed to it, it is more shocking to you - a belief that aggression is a good way to solve problems
○ If they see it ends well, they will follow and think the same thing - a reduction in pro social
behaviour
○ If aggressive behaviours are being modelled, it is what will make sense for children
TV is also educational
- Its not just entertainment
- positive and negative behaviours can be learned
How do children in middle childhood learn?
Short-Term
- Diagrams, models,
- pictures
- Peers
- Analogies
- Fun
Long-Term
- Role models
- Responsibility
