This document discusses facilitating pre-academic and cognitive learning in early childhood. It covers emerging literacy skills, what brain research tells us about child development, developmentally appropriate pre-academic experiences like direct teaching and embedded learning, and planning pre-academic group activities. The overall message is that pre-academic skills are important for preschoolers but should be taught through play and hands-on learning in developmentally appropriate ways.

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Chapter 17
Facilitating Pre-Academic and Cognitive
Learning

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Cognitive Development and Emerging
Literacy
• Involves reading, writing, listening, and
speaking.
• Functionally illiterate are those who cannot
perform well in one of those areas.
• Large numbers of children are coming to
school without the experiences needed to
learn literacy skills.

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Cognitive Development and Emerging
Literacy (continued)
• Defining Pre-Academics
– This includes the whole child: physical
activities, social interactions, and creative and
affective development.
– More than just paper-and-pencil activities are
included.
– Children are active explorers of their world.
– Child-initiated activities are key to cognitive
growth and development.

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Cognitive Development and Emerging
Literacy (continued)
• What brain research tells us
– Infants’ brains are extremely active and busy.
– Synapses are being formed.
– The brain functions on a use-it or lose-it
principle.
– Nature and nurture play a role in the
development of the brain.
– Early care has decisive and long-lasting
impact on children’s brain development.

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Cognitive Development and Emerging
Literacy (continued)
– There are sensitive periods for learning that
only come around once.
– Negative experiences or lack of stimulation
have serious, sustained effects on the brain.
– Intensive intervention is necessary to lessen
the effects of disabilities.

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Banning Academics: ILL Advised?
• Academic skills are appropriate for
preschoolers.
• They should be a part of the play
experience.
• Preschoolers thrive on absorbing these
new experiences.
• Paper-and-pencil tasks and workbooks
should be avoided.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences
• Direct teaching
– The teacher directly teaches a concept.
– The teacher also blends direct teaching with
an indirect and facilitative approach.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Embedded Learning
– Children practice new skills and learn
individualized goals within the regular
classroom activities.
– Clarify objective.
– Determine current level of performance.
– Determine times and places during the
classroom day.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
– Design instructional interaction.
– Implement instruction.
– Establish data collection.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Computers and assistive technology
– Computers allow children to develop
independent skills that they cannot do
otherwise.
– Computer software needs to be
developmentally appropriate.
– Evaluate software for inappropriate content
and violence.
– Computers enable a child to develop eye-
hand coordination.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Fostering eagerness to learn
– Children need to be encouraged to explore
the environment, ask questions, and problem
solve.
– They need to involve all their senses.
– Teachers need to support this eagerness.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Engaging children’s minds
– Teachers show children how to record their
thoughts.
– Teachers write down what a child says and
then teach the child to read.
– It is then a recording of a child’s experiences
for the future.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Valuing today’s learning
– Make learning real.
– Match children to activities that are
developmentally appropriate and encourage
their eagerness to learn.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Readiness skills
– Readiness as maturation
– Readiness as learning
– Teacher needs to identify readiness skills that
may be missing based upon developmental
sequences
– Language readiness

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Attention span
– The length of time an individual is able to
concentrate on an activity is critical to all
learning.
– Classrooms that are organized and inviting
help children attend to a task and extend their
attention span.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Imitation and modeling
– Imitation is the key to learning new skills.
– A child imitates the model to see how a skill is
performed.
– If a child is having difficulty imitating:
• Imitate them
• Provide models at their developmental level
• Provide assistance and be directive
• Make it fun and give encouraging feedback

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Perceptual motor skills
– Understanding sensory messages and
translating them
– Sensory integration—involving more than one
sense in a response
– Activities need to be planned to support the
use of senses for learning

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Fine motor skills
– Eye-hand coordination and the use of fingers,
wrists, and hands
– Essential for self-care skills
– Goes together with perceptual motor skills

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Concept formation
– Internal images or ideas that organize thinking
– Help us to make sense of our world
– Discrimination—likenesses and differences
– Classification—imposing order
– Seriation—arranging objects in order
– Spatial and temporal relationships—how
things go together in space and time

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Memory
– Long-term memory refers to events that
happened a while ago.
– Short-term memory refers to events in the
recent past.
– Memory is essential to learning and building
upon skills.

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Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)
• Following directions
– Children do best when directions are clear.
– One direction at a time is more likely to be
completed than multiple-step directions.
– Teachers should get down on the child’s level
to give the directions.

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• Emergent Literacy
– Rich teacher talk
– Storybook reading
– Phonological Awareness Activities
– Alphabet Activities
– Support for Emergent Reading
– Support for Emergent Writing
– Shared Book Experience
– Integrate Content Focused Activities
Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)

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Planning and Presenting
Pre-Academics
• Pre-reading, pre-writing, and pre-math
skills
– Skills are presented in small group settings.
– Children should be grouped by ability.
– Materials are carefully chosen to enhance skill
development.

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Planning and Presenting
Pre-Academics (continued)
• Grouping children
– Group by age.
– Group by ability.
– Groups should change as the skill levels
change.
– The number is set by the number of children
and adults in the room.

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Planning and Presenting
Pre-Academics (continued)
• Arranging Pre-Academic group activities
– Advance preparation
– Familiar and preferred materials and activities
– Individual workspace with name cards
– Individual setups
– Short periods
– Moving about
– Changing tasks
– Transition activities

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Planning and Presenting
Pre-Academics (continued)
• Enjoying teacher-directed activities
– If children are engaged and learning, teachers
are happy.
– Teachers spend more time planning and
creating lessons.
– The lessons are more fun.
– Children continue to learn.