Chapter 9
ENCOURAGING THE DEVELOPMENT OF
COGNITIVE SKILLS AND LITERACY
OUTLINE
I. What Is Cognition?
II. Basic Cognitive Processes
A. Attention
B. Perception
C. Memory
III. Development of Cognitive Skills
A. The Developmental Theory of Piaget
IV. Demonstration of Cognitive Skills Through the Developmental Stages of
Children’s Play
A. Simple Object Manipulation
V. Facilitating the Development of Cognitive Skills in Infants and Toddlers
A. Intentionality
B. Means-End Behavior
VI. Facilitating the Development of Cognitive Skills in Preschoolers
A. Symbolic Representation
B. Problem Solving
VII. Working with Children Who Have Intellectual Disabilities
A. Characteristics of Children with Significant Intellectual Disabilities
B. Adapting Instruction
VIII. Facilitating Cognitive and Information-Processing Subskills Related to Academic
Achievement
A. Facilitating Children’s Engagement
B. Structuring Learning Experiences
IX. Emergent Math and Science
A. Classification, Seriation, and Concept Development
B. Facilitating Classification
X. Development of Literacy
A. The Precursors of Reading and Writing
B. Relationship Between Oral Language and Literacy
C. The Nature of School Language
XI. Cultural Differences in Early Language and Literacy Experiences
A. Differences in Children’s Early Use of Narrative
B. Cultural Differences in Early Caregiver-Infant Interaction
C. Cultural Differences in Use of Print
XII. Specific Strategies that Support Emergent Literacy
A. Whole-Language Versus Phonological Approaches to the Development of
Literacy
B. Teaching Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
XIII. Summary
XIV. Discussion Topics and Activities
ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS AND VOCABULARY
Accommodation
Adaptation
Alphabetic principle
Assimilation
Attention
Autosymbolic play
Classification
Cognition
Concrete operations
Deferred imitation
Discrimination
Emergent literacy
Formal operations
Intentionality
Literate-style language
Means-end behavior
Mental representation
Metacognitive
Metalinguistic
Course Assignment
Seed-Planting Adaptations Rubric Grading Sheet
Seed-Planting Adaptations Chart
Seed-Planting Adaptations Rubric Grading Sheet
Assignment directions:
In the seed-planting activity (pages 356–358) described in Exhibit 9.7, for at least half of the
steps of the activity, give examples of challenges that might be experienced by a child with a
particular disability. Next, explain how you would make an adaptation for that step so that the
child would be able to fully participate.
Rubric:
A
Exceeds standards
B
Meet standards
C
Majority meet standards some below standard
D
A few meet standards some below standards
F
Below standard
Exceeds Standards
Meet Standards
Below Standard
___ All examples of
challenges are thoughtful and
correct for the specific
disability
___ Almost all the examples
of challenges are correct for
the specific disability
___ Some of the examples of
challenges are incorrect or
not relevant for the specific
disability
___ There are challenges and
adaptations for all 10 steps of
the activity
___ There are challenges and
adaptations for 8 steps of the
activity
___ There are challenges and
adaptations for 7 or less steps
of the activity
___ All of the adaptations are
thoughtful, creative, and
functional
___ Most of the adaptations
are functional and thoughtful
___ The adaptations are
vague and unoriginal
___ All of the adaptations are
relevant and correctly stated
for the specific disability
___ Most of the adaptations
are relevant and most are
correctly stated for the
specific disability
___ Adaptations are not
meaningful or correctly stated
for the specific disability
Seed-Planting Adaptations Chart
Students Name:________________________________________
Disability:__________________________________
Step
#
Adaptation
CHAPTER 9
Multiple Choice
1. Piaget identified the sensorimotor period of development as
a. Between birth and age 5
b. Between ages 2 and 6
c. Between birth and age 2
d. After age 3
2. The three basic cognitive processes are
a. Attention, perception, memory
b. Phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, symbolic ability
c. Construction of reality, intentionality, problem solving
d. Focus, assimilation, accommodation
3. When young children learn to discriminate in shape, size, distance, and color, they are getting
ready for
a. Object permanence
b. Symbolic representation
c. Short-term memory storage
d. Phonemic awareness
4. The 18- to 24-month-old toddler shows that he or she has the ability to think by showing
a. Intuitive ability and intentionality
b. Deferred imitation and pretend play
c. Concrete operations and formal operations
d. Acting out future scenarios
5. The child who uses simple manipulation in play by banging and throwing objects is showing
a. Intentionality
b. Intuitive ability
c. Imitation
d. Functional play
6. Children without disabilities begin to act out “what would happen if…” scenarios at about age
a. 1 or 1½ years
b. 2 or 3 years
c. 4 or 5 years
d. 6 or 7 years
7. In the preoperational stage, children can
a. Perform logical thinking and reasoning
b. Engage in symbolic, pretend play
c. Use processes for hypothesis testing
d. Decenter
8. _________, or ordering according to relative differences, is thought to be an early step
towards understanding number concepts.
a. Assimilation
b. Cognition
c. Object permanence
d. Seriation
9. Children with significant intellectual disabilities
a. Have short-term memory deficits and language problems
b. Have difficulty focusing and sitting still
c. Have difficulty solving problems and using symbolic play
d. Have significant motor problems and are talkative
10. In a structured learning experience centered on fine motor activities in an inclusive early
education classroom, which is the desired makeup of children and adults in groups?
a. One large group with adults in groups
b. Small groups with the children with disabilities making up one group with one adult
c. Small groups of children with and without disabilities in each group with one adult.
d. Small groups of children with and without disabilities in each group without an adult
True-False
1. Preschool programs should emphasize the direct instruction of reading with reading
readiness activities.
2. A cognitive skill appropriate for a preschool child is symbolic representation.
3. The term “developmental delay” can be misleading because it implies that children will
eventually “catch up” to their peers who do not have disabilities.
4. Most teachers tend to teach predominately through talking.
5. Children are able to master rote memory almost from birth.
6. Object permanence is mastered in children without disabilities by the sensorimotor substage
3 at 5 to 8 months.
7. Teaching must be activity-based.
8. A good game for object permanence is peek-a-boo.
9. Symbolic play usually comes before functional play.
10. The most obvious characteristic of children with intellectual delay is their slower rate of
development.
Short-Answer
1. Explain what Piaget meant with his explanation that cognitive development is a product of
the interaction between the environment and biological capacities.
2. Explain the sensorimotor substage 1, from 0 to 1 month.
3. Discuss how the beginning of intentionality starts with the sensorimotor substage 4 at about
8 to 12 months.
4. Discuss how the approach to development of literacy in which reading, writing, speaking,
and listening are viewed as interactive and interdependent.
5. Compare and contrast exploratory, functional, and symbolic play.
6. Identify 3 characteristics of children with significant intellectual disabilities.
7. For student with a significant intellectual disability, give 2 examples of how would you
adapt and art activity such as cutting, pasting, and gluing together a paper jack-o’-lantern.
8. Discuss 2 activities that you could do to embed the goal of, “will count up to three objects,”
during snack time.
9. List two ways that you could help a child with an intellectual disability develop print
awareness during cleanup time.
10. Explain why teaching the concepts of “same” and “different” are essential to the
development of mathematical skills.
Comprehensive Essay
1. You are a teacher of young children. A parent comes to you and complains that all the
children are doing is “playing.” Write a dialogue of how you would respond to this parent.
Be precise. Leave nothing to the imagination.
2. Explain how you could teach matching, sorting, and seriation using a set of blocks.
3. For the above lesson, state how you would adapt it for a child with a hearing impairment,
one with a visual impairment, and one who has a motor impairment (cerebral palsy).
4. Explain Piaget’s two concepts of schema and adaptation in how children learn. Pay
particular attention to the part that assimilation and accommodation play in adaptation.
5. Give three examples of ways you would create the desire or need to perform intentional
acts in young children with disabilities. Be specific as to materials you would use and
things you would do.
6. You want to develop deferred imitation in a child. Outline a lesson including a concrete
sequence of en-route steps of what you would do to reach the terminal objective.
7. How is problem solving different from academic learning? Give an example of each.
8. Give three examples of a teacher’s “staging” or contriving problems to be solved in the
preschool classroom. What would you set up for the problem and how would you present
the problem to your class?
9. “School language” may be difficult for a child from a nonmainstream culture. Give three
examples of some problems that a child from a different culture may encounter in an
American middle-class environment. Identify the culture of the child or various children
and tell why the problem occurs.
10. List five things that middle-class American parents do that give their children literacy
events in early childhood.
Chapter 9 :