Memory
13-year-old Annie is practicing her strategies for remembering the capital cities of Canadian provinces. Annie imagines a reality where she finds a new island where a brown Labrador dog is running around chasing a squirrel, and sees an old man whose name is Saint John, praying in the church. What concept is Annie exemplifying?
Annie is using elaboration: she is 'embellishing' information to make it more memorable. By breaking down the names and creating mental images, Annie is developing a strong and unique memory retrieval cue that sparks her memory to remember the connection between Newfoundland & Labrador and its provincial capital, St. John's.
True or False - Is collaboration among children always productive when problem solving?
False
While collaboration often allows children to solve problems they couldn’t solve by themselves, this is not always the case. Issues like children lacking the social and linguistic skills required for teamwork or problems being too complex for all children involved in the collaboration can strip it of its usefulness.
Lizzie wants to write a birthday card to her classmate, who is turning 7. She writes “Happy birtday Anna yor a grate friend!”. This takes her 30 minutes. List a reason why this might have taken her so long.
Difficulties in printing, spelling, and punctuation
True or False
Children who watch a lot of TV can develop short attention spans over time and have difficulty concentrating in school.
False
Research repeatedly shows that increased TV viewing does not lead to short attention spans. However, the content of the TV program can influence a child’s behavior.
Correct this statement
Cognitive self-regulation involves determining a goal, selecting a strategy to reach said goal, and observing how the strategy has worked for others to determine if it will be effective.
Cognitive self-regulation involves determining a goal, selecting a strategy to reach said goal, and monitoring the effectiveness of the strategy, altering it as needed.
Young children's problem-solving skills are usually characterized by several important characteristics that explain why children are sometimes unable to solve problems (e.g., a failure to encode, plan ahead, and a lack of specific knowledge). However, children often use various strategies (hint: heuristics vs. analytical solutions; how does concrete operational logic shape problem solving?) and collaboration to discover solutions.
As a group, choose to elaborate on either 'various strategies' or 'collaboration' to explain how children can solve problems. Hint: provide a brief example to help explain your concept.
Various strategies: children often use concrete operational logic to solve problems—that is, focusing on concrete facts/situations rather than abstract ideas. Children solve problems using various strategies, which is an improvement over the trial-and-error approach common in younger children. As they develop, children acquire and apply a toolbox of these strategies, including both general-purpose heuristics and analytical solutions.
Ms.Alphabet is beginning to teach her kindergarten class to read. Based on what she knows about teaching phonics, the whole-word method, and the whole-language method, how might she teach her young students?
Research has found that teaching phonicsis essential in teaching young children to read by establishing letter-sound relations.
However, Ms.Alphabet may also include activities from the whole-word or whole-language method to encourage the efforts of her class.
A 5-year old named Lily spends two hours each day watching Sesame Street, Curious George, and Super Why. Her parents are worried that this screen time will affect her creativity and attention span. Based on this chapter, what would you tell Lily’s parents?
Lily's parents should worry less about screen time and more about the content that she is watching. Educational shows like Sesame Street, Curious George, and Super Why can support learning, while fast-paced, action shows might limit creativity by giving children less time to reflect.
Every day, Mary leaves a note in her 7 year old son Alex’s lunch box. Today when he comes home from school he asks her why there wasn’t one. Mary tells him that she is sure she put one in his bag and that he must have lost it, but Alex is unconvinced. Based on the Fuzzy Trace Theory mentioned in the text, what could be going on here?
Memories can either be held in verbatim or gist formats.
As you grow older, there is a tendency to favor gist memories. This reliance on gist memories can lead to false memories, especially when what is being falsely remembered is a part of a well-established script. This could be what happened here, as Mary is so used to putting a note in Alex’s lunch box that she thinks she remembers doing it that day, despite having not.
Children and adolescents can struggle to grasp new concepts due to conflicts where flaws in their previous mental models of the world do not align with more credible theories being presented to them. Suppose you are a science teacher who wants to teach ninth graders about the Bohr-Rutherford model in chemistry. What is something you can do to reduce this problem?
Ex Answer: You can have students write down their own theories of how chemistry works in order to identify where fallacies in their theories begin. You can then use that information to pinpoint how you can most efficiently teach them
3-year-old Sam is learning to count! During snack time, his parents decide to test his learning by asking him, "How many cookies do you have?". He responds with "1, 2, 6, 5... 5!!". His parents chuckle and ask him to try again. Sam re-attempts with "1, 3, 4, 5... 5!!"
Which of the 2 principles of counting has little Sam mastered, and which one has he yet to grasp?
Sam has mastered:
- One-to-one principle (only 1 name assigned to each object)
- Cardinality principle (number names differ from the one before)
Sam has yet to grasp:
- Stable-order principle (number names counted in the same order)
A 8-year old child spends many hours each day on the computer. Sometimes he will go on educational websites or will be researching things for school; However, other times, he will be browsing social media or visiting websites that include inaccurate or misleading information. Why could this be harmful, and what strategies can the parents use to decrease the harm?
Children often struggle to consider another person’s point of view and can have difficulty distinguishing between fact and opinion. Exposure to inaccurate content can shape false beliefs and affect their understanding of the world.
Example strategies: Supervise the child’s online activity, teach basic media literacy, and model healthy screentime themselves.