SFL DAP #7

DAP #7
Read pages 257-326 in the DAP manual

In concluding part of the DAP manual, the authors describe children’s development and corresponding developmentally appropriate practices for 6- through 8-year olds. Children this age attend the primary grades and have particular needs that teachers must be aware of to teach them successfully. As you read through this section, you may want to reflect upon the experiences you had in the early grades. What teachers do you remember and what do you remember about them? What do you remember about learning to read? What kinds of activities did you especially enjoy in the primary grades? Understanding children this age can provide a new perspective on how you can best meet their needs as a parent or an educator.

PART 1: Identify one characteristic of particular interest to you in each of the sections (1 point each, 16 points total)
Physical Development:
Overall growth and physical maturation: muscle mass also increase in both boys and girls, but they are by no means physically mature in terms of skeletal and ligament development, there is a growth spurt of the brain (261)
Health and fitness: on the other hand, primary grade children generally experience better health- fewer infections and illnesses such as colds, stomachaches, and ear infections- than preschoolers and kindergartners (261)
Gross motor development: boys tend to throw farther than girls, but research shows that this difference is dependent on opportunities to practice (262)
Fin motor development: it is not abnormal for a child to be unable to draw, say, a recognizable diamond shape until about age 8 (262)
Promoting physical development in the primary grades: because of children’s growing inclination to compare themselves with others, adults need to avoid pushing hypercompetitive activities for children in this age range (263)

Social and Emotional Development:
a. Social development: where teachers were observed to be respectful of children, p positive, and sensitive and where feedback engaged the children and expanded learning, children displayed significantly better social competence than children in other classrooms. (265)
b. Emotional development: an evolving sense of conscience, but they tend to be rigid in terms of interpreting and applying rules- for both themselves and others. They may expect visitors to follow the rules of the home or classroom as strictly as they do. (269)
c. Promoting social and emotional development in the primary grades: support for cooperative small group projects in which children work together, they help to promote children’s comfort level with one another and, potentially, their likelihood of becoming friends (271)

Cognitive Development:
a. Concept acquisition and reasoning: children typically master serration and sequencing (272)
b. Executive functioning: children must be able to focus their attention, remember thing on purpose, an be able to compare the process and findings of their own learning with teacher expectation (273)
c. Moral development: children of 6 or 7 typically treat every little mistake as a major crime, deserving of terrible punishment or dire consequences. Adults can help children assess mistakes realistically and find ways to correct them. (277)
d. Promoting cognitive development in the primary grades: no matter what the subject area, teachers should keep learning concrete, relevant to children’s everyday lives, and connected to previously learned material. (278)

Language and Literacy Development:
a. Vocabulary knowledge and communication skills: children learn new words at a far more rapid rate than before- almost 20 words per day when they are in an environment where they continually hear new words, listen to and read books (281)
b. Reading and Writing: also important is being able to retrieve word meaning readily- as opposed to having to struggle to remember what a word means, which jeopardizes comprehension (282)
c. English language learners: young children have a great capacity to acquire bilingual and even multilingual competence (283)
d. Promoting language and literacy development in the primary grades: it is important to keep everyone engaged in whole-group sessions by, for example, having children vote on an answer to show of hands, answer in unison, or practice a task briefly with another child (286)

PART 2: Now, choose one section under each of the 4 headings and discuss what impact the information will have on your teaching (2 points each, 8 points total).
Health and fitness: children at this age living in poverty continue to be at higher risk for a number of health problems-from environmental factors such as exposure to lead-based paints; poor-quality medical care; or inadequate shelter, hygiene, or nutrition. (261)
This will influence my teaching because it made me realize how much poverty does not simply limit children’s development because they have fewer opportunities but that children living in poverty suffer physically. These physically setbacks will influence their ability to function in my classroom. If a child went without breakfast that morning they will be thinking about how hungry they are, and not about what I am trying to teach them. I have not thought of a specific solution to this horrible problem, besides the basic keep in contact with the family and know what is going on. I think that it would be a good idea to become aware of the different financial aid, or wick programs in the area so that I can pass this information off to all of the parents in my classroom.
Social and emotional development:
The structure of peer groups is flexible; children tend to enter and leave social circles easily at this age, such that groups are fluid and permeable in most cases (265)
This surprised me, and made me realize that as a teacher I should promote friendships with my students. I don’t only need to encourage a community of learners, but I need to encourage individual friendships among my students. I think that small group activities would help to do this, and always talking positively about students will help them to want to be friends with each other. I don’t know but maybe I can even mention at parent teacher conferences who their child gets along with and encourage play dates.
Cognitive
By the primary grades, children are expected to and are ready to start learning on demand, according to Vygotsky and his followers (273)
This surprised me a little, but then I thought about it and realized that I need to continue to scaffold my students. When I am teaching I want to set the expectation high for my students so that they feel confident that they can accomplish great things. One way to do this would be to keep an open curriculum, one that allows a student to reach their greatest potential. I also realized that it is not just important to keep records of preschool children, but that all children need to set goals and have continual checkups on their progress. When I know each of my students individually I can help them to work collectively to reach high expectations. I should expect my students to be able to learn on demand and pay attention but that still means that the classroom is student lead and that I provided opportunities that are engaging to.
Language and literacy development
They read increasingly longer books independently, with a goal of about 20 minutes a day outside of school. (283)
I need to have chapter books in the classroom, and encourage my students to visit the library in search of novels that they enjoy. Instead of just picture books or short stories I need to have engaging chapter books. I think that I want to have a library filled with books that I am familiar with. If I am familiar with the books that I have in my student library I can recommend books to students based on their interest and reading level. Then I can promote reading by talking about books in the classroom. This would even be a good age to introduce small reading clubs or teams that would read for 10 to fifteen minutes in class or for homework and then each group would discuss the novel for another 10 to fifteen minutes.


PART 3:
In the “Examples to Consider” section (pages 289 - 326), each age break down is addressed with accompanying “developmentally appropriate” and “in contrast” examples of how children develop and learn.
Indicate here if you completed the reading (or how much you completed) to receive your points for this question. Completed the entire reading (5 points)