Facilitating Pre-Academic and Cognitive Learning

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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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What Brain Research Tells Us
• Infants’ brains are extremely active and
busy forming synapses.
• 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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What Brain Research Tells Us
(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.
• Academics should be a part of the play
experience.
• Preschoolers thrive on absorbing new
experiences.
• Paper-and-pencil tasks and workbooks are
not appropriate.

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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
Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)

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• Support for Emergent Reading
– Look at and read books on their own and with
friends.
• Support for Emergent Writing
– Encourage emergent skills such as scribbling,
random letter strings, and invented spelling.
• Shared Book Experience
– Adults model skills.
• Integrate Content Focused Activities
– Investigate topics of interest to children.
Developmentally Appropriate
Pre-Academic Experiences (continued)

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Planning and Presenting Pre-
Academics
• 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.