Intellectual Development of School-Age Children Kaley Smith, Jessica Raven & Kristine Adair …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Introduction

School-age kids can think with even more abstract concepts than preschoolers

Between the ages of 7-11, children’s way of thinking depends more on logic than perception

This stage is referred to as concrete operational stage The term concrete means that logic is based on what

the child has experienced before

How School-Age Children Think

School-age children are in the stage between preoperational thinking and reasoning on the most abstract level.

School-age children are also beginning to understand that others have different ideas than them

Realizing that others have different ideas form them leads to children questioning their thoughts and going back and trying to get the right answer

School-age children are also able to focus on more than once aspect of something at a time

This means that the child can see more than once change in something at one time

How School-Age Children Think

School-age children are better able to understand reversibility logic, meaning they can carry out a task in reverse order

Reversibility logic is the ability to follow a line of reasoning back to where it started

School-age children can mentally put together a series of events to see changes in an object

Being able to notice transformations helps children understand other concepts

How School-Age Children Think

The school-age child also uses deductive reasoning Deductive reasoning is reasoning from the general to

the specific

Older children use inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning is reasoning from specific facts to

general conclusions

Inductive reason is often found in children over 11 years old

What School-Age Children Learn

School-age children begin to use logic in their thought processes

Logic helps them learn school subjects like language arts, math, and science

Physical Knowledge Concepts

Physical knowledge concepts include concepts about size, shape, color, texture, and other qualities of objects and people.

Concept: an idea formed by combining what is known about a person, object or place

It also included knowing what happens to objects when they are acted upon:

Hit, thrown, or hidden

Because a school-age child’s senses are maturing, so will their ability to accurately perceive things.

Perception

Perception: Organizing information gathered by the senses.

Accurate perception aids physical knowledge concepts.

Ex: If you touch something that’s hot and get burned, all hot surfaces are capable of burning you.

School-age children learn to accurately pair visual and auditory stimuli

Ex: pairing a letter with the sound that it makes

Memory

Improved memory also helps to develop more concrete physical knowledge concepts.

School-age children are beginning to understand the importance of having a good memory.

without one they cannot remember characteristics of objects, people and places, which makes recognizing them nearly impossible

Things such as songs and rhythms can help children develop a stronger memory

Logic

Logic allows school-age children to form more accurate concepts and ideas

Logic allows children to understand conservation: changing the shape, direction, or position of objects

does not alter their quantity. Ex: Even though the apples are different shapes and

colours, there are still two apples. Children must understand conservation before they can

learn other math concepts Conservation is continually built upon until the child is

typically 11 years old

Logical Thinking Concepts

Logical Thinking Concepts are a child’s ability to understand the relationships between objects

These continue to develop until the middle-childhood years

Examples of logical thinking concepts are classification, ordering, numbering, spatial concepts, time, & cause and effect.

Classification

Classification: the grouping of objects into a class Ex: lions and tigers are cats, pandas and grizzlies are

bears

Order

School-age children can show relationships between things by putting them in order

They typically do this by noting differences between objects

Ex: sorting toys into rows by size

Numbering

During the school-age years, children learn basic number concepts

This can include sorting numbers by great than and less than, equal to, etc.

Sometimes these concepts are grasped before children can even do math, such as addition and subtraction.

Space

School-age children understand space in relation to the distance between objects

Ex: if an object is near or far from another, or if a person is taller or shorter than another person

Distance, Time, and Speed

These three are typically the most difficult logical thinking concepts for children to grasp

They will often make mistakes such as walking somewhere makes it far away, and running their makes the distance shorter.

Because history and calendar time is confusing, children’s stories typically begin with “once upon a time” as apposed to “a thousand years ago”

Cause and Effect Relationships

As school-age children begin less egocentric, they start to understand that their actions have an effect on their surroundings

Science concepts become easier to understand

Vocabulary

Children of this age give more exact definitions than younger children

- For example, if you asked younger children to define orange they would say “You eat it!” but with school age children they would say “it’s a color or a fruit”

Articulation

Articulation of language is usually mastered by eight years.

Children with the most articulation problems at the end of the preschool years usually continue to have problems in the school years

Speech problems are also related to reading problems

This is because children need to be able to articulate (say sounds) in order to decode the sounds of letters; a skill that is needed for reading and spelling

Grammar Around nine years, children have mastered the

grammar they hear.

They use their own set of rules to make plurals, use pronouns, and show tense.

Activity

Find the definitions for the following terms:

Concrete operational stage

Formal operations

Deductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning

Scientific reasoning

Visual

Auditory

Conservation

Hierarchical classification