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

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 Introduction

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

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

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 How School-Age Children Think

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 What School-Age Children Learn

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. Physical Knowledge Concepts

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 Perception

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 Memory

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 Logic

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. Logical Thinking Concepts

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

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 Order

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. Numbering

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” Distance, Time, and Speed

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 Cause and Effect Relationships

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” Vocabulary

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 Articulation

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. Grammar

Activity Find the definitions for the following terms: Concrete operational stage Formal operations Deductive reasoning Inductive reasoning Scientific reasoning Visual Auditory Conservation Hierarchical classification Activity