A requirement of a few of the education classes offered at the University of North Georgia is to complete 20 hours of “field experience.” In the past, I have fulfilled these requirements in an actual school doing one-on-one “mentoring” with students. For this class, I decided to volunteer at a summer day camp for a few days. I was surprised to see how many connections to education I was able to make throughout the course of that experience.
Field Experience: Jefferson Parks and Rec. Department The Jefferson City Parks and Rec. Department hosts a daytime summer camp, along with several other extracurricular sports camps. The day camp runs from 6:30 in the morning to 6:00 in the evening when most children get picked up. This camp is ideal for
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Understanding the developmental stages of these children allowed me to relate to them better because I knew how to approach them. For instance, I was able to connect different learning theories to my observations. These 7 and 8 year olds, according to Piaget, are in the concrete operational stage. During this stage, “children can form concepts, see relationships and solve problems, but only as long as they involve familiar objects and situations” (Slavin, 2015, p. 34). Fortunately, their thinking is becoming less and less egocentric, so they are able to explore objective ways of thinking. Unable to think like adults, they are still able to see things in the context of other meanings, this is called inferred reality. I was shocked to hear some of the vocabulary a few children were using at this camp. Most of the children who spent their free time reading or writing stories were really the ones whose advanced language really impressed me. The rate at which a child’s language and literacy skills develop increases dramatically during elementary school (p. …show more content…
Although my field experience wasn’t in a classroom, I was still able to interpret my experiences and relate them to a potential classroom setting. For instance, despite the stable schedule, the camp seemed to lack structure. The instant I walked into the establishment, chaos prevailed and the camp counselors displayed little control of the children. It became clear that the leader was not viewed as an authority figure by the “campers.” To avoid this happening to me in a classroom, boundaries and guidelines would be established initially and coordinating punishments would be carried out. In a summer camp setting, no one wants to be “the bad guy” because the kids are there to have fun and remain occupied. Because of this fear and the soft-spoken nature of the group leader, she had no concept of classroom
In acquiring this new-found knowledge Piaget stated that when the child is given a more complex problem they can use logical and cognitive processes to answer instead of just their imagination and/or visual prospects (Feldman, 2006, pp. 286-287). Although some kids may not fully just jump into the concrete operation stage Piaget says it is completely normal that kids shift back and forth between preoperational and concrete operational thinking during the two years before they completely reach the stage. When the process is complete you should notice how your child becomes more sophisticated in handling their information. Their concepts of speed and time also highly increase. During the middle childhood stage, short term memory improves significantly. For example, a child will be able to repeat a set of numbers back to you with more ease and less concentration then they could before (Feldman, 2006, p. 289). Vocabulary of children also begin to rapidly increase during the school years. They can take in what the teacher says and store it in their brains so more knowledge is obtained. This is the stage in which your child usually learns to read and
Eliza, for the last five years, has worked as a camp counselor at Mazemakers Day Camp. Most recently, Eliza was a senior counselor, responsible for leading four classes each day, while nurturing camper growth in general. Eliza has been able to expand her skills in curriculum development, camper connections,
Field Experience Description (Preamble/Introduction/Background): the following field experience observation took place at Plainfield Connecticut’s Shepard Hill Elementary School, 234 Shepard Hill Rd, Plainfield, CT 06374, herein S.H.E., during the fall of 2017, and was conducted by Sacred Heart University M.Ed. candidate Peter Scott Harmyk, Esq. Because of confidentiality requirements per request of the interviewees, specifically the classroom teacher and the special education teacher, herein “Ms. Teacher” and “Ms. Special Ed” the two students observed for the purpose of this essay shall also remain anonymous; further, this candidate was respectfully denied access to the appropriate IEP and 504 documentation corresponding to the two first-grade
Siegler, R., & Alibali, M. (2005). Children’s Thinking Fourth Edition. Prentice Hall Inc. Upper Saddle River NJ.
Methods and approaches to teaching have been greatly influenced by the research of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Both have contributed to the field of education by offering explanations for children's cognitive learning styles and abilities. While Piaget and Vygotsky may differ on how they view cognitive development in children, both offer educators good suggestions on how to teach certain material in a developmentally appropriate manner.
Zoe is a very great attentive student. She is a student whoholds a lot of valuable pronciples from her Haitian-Cuabn culture. The monment she enters the building she greets people with respect. She always says good morning and refers to all staff and her peers by their name. Zoe always comes to school in a positive attitude. I have yet to see her upset which allows me to believe she is good in toning her emotions or personal life outside of school grounds. Outside of school she is always busy between homework, family and tutoring at the SCO Family Services program in Downtown, Brooklyn. By the end of her long day she is exhausted but yet a smile is always on her face giving no sinces of anger or worries.if I was to describe Zoe’s emotional tone or color it would be lavender. She is calm, soothing to me around but ye keps firm.she had a bright future a head of her. Between the classes I have observed her in she is always energetic, cheerful and strong minded. She is excited in theatre class showing off her acting skills and in Spanish class she is attentive when doing her Spanish class work.
Jean Piaget was a theorist which “who” focused on people’s “children’s” mental processes (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011, p.10). Piaget developed (words missing) how children differentiate and mentally show(tense) the world and how there , thinking , logic , and problem solving ability is developed (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011 , p.10). Piaget analyzed that children’s cognitive processes develop in an orderly sequence or series (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011 , p.11) . But each stage show how children understand the world around them. – sentence fragment; should be joined to the previous sentence. Every child goes through the same development”al” steps but some are more advance(d) than others . Piaget described four stages of child
McInerney (2014) explores Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development, explaining that language is used as a communication instrument and a way to organize our own thoughts. Vygotsky believed that children develop a tool called self-talk or private speech as a way for them to make sense of their own actions and thoughts. This then develops to then internalizing their thoughts and further to public speech, Vygotsky’s belief was that children develop cognitively with exposure to their surroundings and social situations. Learning how to process, project and receive language at a young age is important in the development of higher mental processes including; planning and evaluating, memory and reason, which are important in the functioning in society as adults. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, language is the basis for learning the skill of internalizing problems instead of using objects and increasing their mental capacity (McInerney, 2014). At young ages not being able to develop and maintain language skills, for example having Specific Language Impairment, which restricts the ability to retain language skills to memory. This is problematic as it can impact children academically and psychosocially, and can extend to mathematical concepts, attention capacity and motor skills. If a child has issues absorbing these concepts it can lead to other problems in cognitive applications including problem solving, working memory and logical thinking (Reichenbach, Bastian, Rohrbach, Gross, & Sarrar, 2016). Piaget’s theory states that between the ages of 2-7 children are in the preoperational stage of development which means they have a sense of eccentricity, when talking to a child we can hear the use of instrumental and personal language functions. As
Over the course of this “interview” came a new found understanding for the cognitive development of a child, and their reasoning which came as a great surprise. Answers that were presented, and rationales for why things were as they were sincerely amazed me. Mental capabilities mature with age, and I now understand how brilliant Piaget was for classifying such behaviors.
The theory of cognitive development also happens in stages. Piaget believes that children create schemata to categorize and interpret information. As new information is learned, schemata are adjusted through assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is when information is compared to what is already known and understand it in that context. Accommodation is when schemata is changed based on new information. This process is carried out when children interact with their environment. Piaget’s four stages include sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.Sensorimotor happens between the ages of 0-2, the preoperational stage happens between the ages of 2-6. The concrete operational stage happens between the ages of 7-11, the formal operational stage happens between ages 12 and up. During the first stage, children develop object permanence and stranger anxiety, the second stage includes pretend play and egocentrism language development. The third stage includes conservation and mathematical transformations, the last stage includes abstract logic and moral
Children’s from this stage remain egocentric for the most part but to begin to internalize representations. (Piaget, 1999). Concrete operational stage is children to age seven to eleven. They develop the ability to categorize objects and how they relate to one another. A child’s become more mastered in math by adding and subtracting. If a child eat one brownie out of a jar containing six. By doing the math there would be 5 brownies left by counting the remaining brownies left in the jar because they are able to model the jar in their
For Vygotsky, children are seen as active beings on their development through social interactions with parents, teachers, and other adults, as well as by participating in their cultural activities. The interactions they have with other individuals and their culture opens their minds to new information and helps develop skills not previously attained. To further understand cognitive development in Piaget and Vygotsky’s theory, we must first look at the processes involved.
This was a two year course to learn how to be a youth leader for children aged 9-15. During this programme, we covered mental health issues, bullying, social problems, abuse and how to deal with these issues if they arose during the residential camp. In a 3 week camp last year, I planned an activity about the Israeli - Palestinian conflict. As this is such a sensitive topic I had to do extensive research in order to produce a balanced point of view. Being a camp leader meant that I was in effect loco parentis for the children. This was a huge responsibility as I did have to deal with a number of sensitive issues. From this experience I learnt communication skills, how to use my initiative and developed my leadership skills to a whole new
During my work experience at , I was fortunate enough to have experienced firsthand and learned, many different sides of what goes into a project, the general process of how a project is initially planned, developed and completed; as well as how much work and detail goes into every stage. Another valuable lesson I have learned during these 12 weeks, were the many different types of work an Engineer has to perform, which in turn, have provided me with more insight into the different types of roles and responsibilities that I could perform, as a Civil Engineer.
Piaget believes functions of language develops over four stages which are, the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. To briefly explain each of these children develop the sensorimotor stage from ages 0 – 2 years, Piaget sees language at this stage as more physical where children experiment with their mouths and learn to repeat parents sounds. The pre-operational stage from ages 2 – 7 years, is when children talk more and have the ability to solve problems about stories on specific and concrete facts. The concrete operational stage begins at about age 6 or 7 when children can work things out in their mind and explain their reasoning. The formal operational stage begins at 11 or 12 years when children use abstract reason and can use language to express and discuss things found in subjects such as mathematics or philosophy. Piaget highlights the roles of language in children’s lives by describing the functions of language. (McDevitt, Ormrod, Cupit, Chandler and Aloa, 2013, p. 209 –