Allen Chapter 17

Allen and Cowdery, The Exceptional Child: Inclusion in Early Childhood Education, Ninth Edition. © 2022 Cengage. All
Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Facilitating Cognitive Learning
Chapter 17

Chapter Objectives (1 of 2)
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
17-1 describe how cognitive development and emerging literacy are
interrelated.
17-2 highlight what brain research tells us about children’s development and
how this can be used to design teaching activities.
17-3 understand why it is important to provide academic opportunities for
preschoolers.

Chapter Objectives (2 of 2)
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
17-4 develop an understanding of what developmentally appropriate
cognitive activities look like.
17-5 explain how to design an early childhood classroom’s curriculum,
including grouping of children, setup of tasks, and types of materials.

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

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

Knowledge Check Activity 1
What outcome has emerged out of the need to introduce preacademic skills
into early education, in the opinion of Parlakian (2010)?
a. Identity crisis in the field of education
b. Learning something worthwhile
c. A reduction in children’s natural curiosity, enthusiasm, and interest in learning
d. An increase in children’s enthusiasm and interest in learning

Knowledge Check Activity 1 Answer
What outcome has emerged out of the need to introduce preacademic skills
into early education, in the opinion of Parlakian (2010)?
Answer: c. A reduction in children’s natural curiosity, enthusiasm, and interest in
learning

What Brain Research Tells Us (1 of 2)
• Brain is particularly sponge-like in the first few years
• Forms a “network of neural pathways,” and young children form twice as
many as they need
• Form and reinforce these links (called synapses) so they become a
permanent part of the brain’s wiring
• Connections happen through continual and repeated use
• Growth of the brain operates on a use-it-or-lose-it principle

What Brain Research Tells Us (2 of 2)
Five major points to consider:
1. Complex interplay between nature (genes) and nurture (environment) in the development
of the brain
2. Early care (both positive and negative) has a decisive and long-lasting impact on ability to
learn
3. The brain has a great capacity to change, but some critical time periods are more crucial
than others
4. Negative experiences or lack of stimulation are likely to have serious and sustained effects
5. Timely, well-designed, and intensive intervention is of utmost importance

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.

Effective Developmentally Appropriate Practice
Strategies (1 of 2)
• Acknowledge what children do or say
• Encourage persistence and effort rather than just praising and evaluating
what the child has done
• Give specific feedback rather than general comments
• Model attitudes, ways of approaching problems, and behavior toward others
• Demonstrate the correct way to do something

Effective Developmentally Appropriate Practice
Strategies (2 of 2)
• Create or add challenge so that a task goes a bit beyond what the children
can already do
• Ask questions that provoke children’s thinking
• Give assistance (such as a cue or hint) to help children work on the edge of
their current abilities
• Provide information, directly giving children facts, verbal labels, vocabulary,
and other information
• Give directions for children’s action or behavior.

Developmentally Appropriate Cognitive
Experiences (1 of 5)
Direct teaching
• May suggest to children what to do and say, but mostly they blend direct teaching with an
indirect and facilitative approach
Embedded Learning
• Children practice new skills and learn individualized goals during the regular classroom
activities and routine

Planning Steps for Embedded Learning
Opportunities (ELOs)
• Clarify objective
• Determine current level of performance
• Determine times and places during the classroom day when ELOs will be
inserted
• Use classroom schedule to identify times and activities where instruction is
feasible
• Include use of transition times
• Design instructional interaction
• Implement instruction
• Establish data collection

Computers and Assistive Technology
• Computer software needs to be developmentally appropriate.
• Evaluate software for inappropriate content and violence.
• Computers enable a child to develop eye-hand coordination.
• For children with disabilities, computers can foster independence by providing help with
communication and mobility.

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.
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 a recording of a child’s experiences for the future.

Valuing Today’s Learning
• Make learning real
• Match children to activities that are developmentally appropriate and encourage their
eagerness to learn

Readiness Skills (1 of 2)
• Teacher needs to identify readiness skills that may be missing based upon developmental
sequences.
• Language readiness
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.

Readiness Skills (2 of 2)
Imitation and modeling
• Imitation is the key to learning new skills.
• A child imitates the model to see how a skill is performed.
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

Fine Motor Skills (1 of 2)
• Eye-hand coordination and the use of fingers, wrists, and hands
• Essential for self-care skills
• Goes together with perceptual motor skills
• Manipulative materials, sometimes referred to as table toys, are especially
good for promoting fine-motor and perceptual-motor skills

Fine Motor Skills (2 of 2)
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

Memory (1 of 2)
• 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.

Memory (2 of 2)
Activities that encourage children to practice remembering within their
everyday work and play activities are the kind that foster learning.
• Conversational questions of interest to the child
• Remembering one another’s names and teachers’ names, and using these names
appropriately
• Remembering where materials are stored, so as to get them out and put them away
properly
• Telling what objects have been removed in games such as cover-the-tray
• Story and picture-reading activities as described earlier
• Leaving the bathroom in prescribed order for the next children who will be using it

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.

Emerging Literacy
• Rich teacher talk—talking to children is the most effective way to help them
develop language and to increase their vocabularies
• Storybook reading—children learn critical skills by engaging with books
• Phonological awareness activities—ability to hear and identify the sounds of
spoken and written language
• Alphabet activities—include playing with letters, singing the ABC song and
reading ABC books, pointing out letters children see in the environment,
and focusing on the letters in the children’s own names

• 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

Case Study
Selma, a preschool teacher, has observed that the recent science unit on
seeds has fascinated her class. The class grew beans from seeds as part of
the lesson. She wants to follow their interest and expand on it while focusing
on literacy skills. She has already filled the book area with new books on the
topics of seeds, growing plants, and spring. She has introduced more plants
into the classroom. Over the upcoming weekend, a group of parents is building
a raised-bed garden for the class to plant in. Tomorrow, in the art center, each
child is decorating the cover of a journal in which they can draw pictures of
seeds and plants.
a. List additional ways that Selma can integrate her class’s interest in growing seeds
and plants with their emerging reading and writing skills.

Planning and Presenting Cognitive Learning
Activities (1 of 3)
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

Activities (2 of 3)
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

Activities (3 of 3)
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.

Knowledge Check Activity 2
How do children conduct themselves during a holding activity?
a. Sit quietly without doing anything
b. Work independently while waiting for group activities to begin
c. Work in groups
d. Engage with the teacher in a teacher-directed experience

Knowledge Check Activity 2 Answer
How do children conduct themselves during a holding activity?
Answer: b. Work independently while waiting for group activities to begin

Summary (1 of 2)
Now that the lesson has ended, you should have learned how to:
• Describe how cognitive development and emerging literacy are interrelated.
• Highlight what brain research tells us about children’s development and how this can be
used to design teaching activities.
• Understand why it is important to provide academic opportunities for preschoolers.

Summary (2 of 2)
Now that the lesson has ended, you should have learned how to:
• Develop an understanding of what developmentally appropriate cognitive activities look
like.
• Explain how to design an early childhood classroom’s curriculum, including grouping of
children, setup of tasks, and types of materials.

Allen Chapter 17

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