166
Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc.
Unit 3 The Learner
Cognitive Development
Children in third and fourth grade face new challenges at school. Their
learning becomes more complex. Although most are still eager learners,
teachers note that more students have a downturn in interest and
enthusiasm. If they fall behind in their studies, they have a more difficult
time catching up later, since the pace of learning continues to increase.
Thinking Skills
Improvements in key thinking skills help students cope with greater
demands in the classroom. They are able to focus their attention for
longer periods of time. Memory improves. This is important for a variety of
tasks including remembering math facts, doing well on spelling tests, and
retaining content from one lesson to the next.
Eight- and nine-year-olds are in Piaget’s concrete operational period
(ages 7–11). They continue to learn best through experience with actual
objects. Piaget’s experiments, however, showed that children between
the ages of 7 and 11 are learning to think in more complex ways. They
are learning to solve problems mentally. Piaget noted development of the
following important skills during this period:
• Seriation is the ability to place objects in order by a
characteristic, such as smallest to largest.
• Classification is the ability to sort items by one or more
characteristics they have in common. Children at this stage are
able to identify objects with two or more characteristics, such as
separating out all of the small green balls from a group of balls of
mixed colors and sizes.
• Conservation (discussed earlier in this chapter) is the ability
to understand that a simple change in the shape of an object
does not change its amount. (Water poured into a container of
a different shape is still the same amount; a ball of clay that is
flattened retains the same amount of clay.)
• Transitivity is the ability to understand that relationships
between two objects can extend to a third object. For instance, if
Ashley is taller than Justin, and Justin is taller than Thomas, then
Ashley is taller than Thomas.
Language and Reading
At this stage of development, children’s improved thinking skills help
boost their reading and writing abilities. In kindergarten through second
grade, the emphasis is on learning to read. For third- and fourth-graders,