Sunday, February 19, 2012

A Post From Your School Psychologist: Learning Language in Early Childhood

As an early childhood psychologist, I spend a lot of time considering the academic and language needs of our youngest learners.  Academic knowledge and language processing are greatly entangled during early development. It is impossible to analyze a child's academic skill set without accounting for his/her language development. 

Position concepts (e.g., under) are not just "language knowledge," they are actually foundational math skills.  Before a student can consider which number comes "next" in a sequence, they need to have a schema for what "next" means.  This applies to other concepts like "more" "bigger" and "behind" exc, exc..

I ran across this fun way to teach position concepts.  You could cut out a "triangle shape" to make a fan (attached at the center with a brad).  Then students could use a magnifying glass or "3D" glasses to locate the monkey.   




No comments:

Post a Comment