Topic: “General characteristics of development
Junior schoolchild and teenager
1. General characteristics of primary school age.
2. General characteristics of adolescence.
General characteristics of primary school age
Primary school age covers the age range from 6-7 to 10-11 years old and occupies the initial period of school life (grades I - IV of the school).
Primary school age is called the pinnacle of childhood. The child retains many childish qualities: frivolity, naivety, looking at an adult from the bottom up. But he is already beginning to lose his childish spontaneity in behavior, he has a different logic of thinking. Teaching for him is a meaningful activity. At school, he acquires not only new knowledge and skills, but also a certain social status. The interests, values of the child, the whole way of his life are changing. With admission to school, the position of the child in the family changes, he has the first serious duties at home related to learning and work. Adults begin to make increased demands on him. All this taken together forms the problems that the child needs to solve with the help of adults at the initial stage of schooling.
CRISIS 7 YEARS
On the border of preschool and primary school age, the child goes through another age crisis. This fracture may begin at 7 years of age, or may shift to 6 or 8 years.
Causes of the crisis 7 years. The reason for the crisis is that the child outgrew that system of relationships in which it is included.
The crisis of 3 years was associated with the awareness of oneself as an active subject in the world of objects. Pronouncing "I myself", the child sought to act in this world, to change it. Now he comes to realize his places in the world of public relations. He discovers for himself the significance of a new social position - the position of a schoolchild, associated with the performance of educational work highly valued by adults.
The formation of an appropriate internal position radically changes the child's self-awareness. According to L.I. Bozovic, the crisis of 7 years is the period of birth social "I" child.
A change in self-awareness leads to revaluation of values. What was important before becomes secondary. Old interests, motives lose their motive power, they are replaced by new ones. Everything related to learning activities (first of all, marks) turns out to be valuable, everything related to the game is less important. A small schoolboy plays with enthusiasm, but the game ceases to be the main content of his life.
During a crisis, there are deep emotional changes child, prepared by the whole course of personal development in preschool age.
Separate emotions and feelings that a child of four years old experienced were fleeting, situational, and did not leave a noticeable trace in his memory. The fact that he periodically encountered failures in some of his affairs or sometimes received unflattering reviews about his appearance and experienced grief about this did not affect the formation of his personality.
During the crisis of 7 years, it is manifested that L.S. Vygotsky calls summarizing experiences. A chain of failures or successes (in studies, in communication), each time approximately equally experienced by the child, leads to the formation stable affective complex – feelings of inferiority, humiliation, offended pride or a sense of self-worth, competence, exclusivity. Of course, in the future, these affective formations can change, even disappear, as experience of a different kind is accumulated. But some of them, supported by relevant events and assessments, will be fixed in the personality structure and influence the development of the child's self-esteem, his level of aspirations.
The complication of the emotional and motivational sphere leads to the emergence of inner life child. This is not a cast from his outer life. Although external events constitute the content of experiences, they are refracted in consciousness in a peculiar way.
An important part of the inner life is semantic orientation in one's own actions. This is an intellectual link in the chain of actions of the child, allowing him to adequately assess the future act in terms of its results and more distant consequences. It eliminates the impulsiveness and immediacy of the child's behavior. Thanks to this mechanism childish innocence is lost: the child thinks before acting, begins to hide his feelings and hesitations, tries not to show others that he is ill. The child outwardly is no longer the same as “internally”, although during the primary school age, openness will still be preserved to a large extent, the desire to throw out all emotions on children and close adults, to do what you really want.
ACTIVITIES OF THE JUNIOR STUDENT
With the child entering school, his development begins to be determined by educational activities, which become the leading ones. This activity determines the nature of other activities: play, work and communication.
Each of the four named activities has its own characteristics in primary school age.
Educational activity. Doctrine at primary school age, it is just beginning, and therefore it should be spoken of as a developing type of activity. Educational activity goes a long way of formation.
The development of learning activities will continue throughout the years of school life, but the foundations are laid in the first years of study. The main burden in the formation of educational activities falls on the primary school age, since at this age the main components of educational activity: learning activities, control and self-regulation.
Components of educational activity. Educational activity has a certain structure. Let us briefly consider the components of educational activity, in accordance with the ideas of D.B. Elkonin.
The first component is motivation. At the heart of educational and cognitive motives are cognitive need and the need for self-development. This is an interest in the content side of educational activity, in what is being studied, and an interest in the process of educational activity - how, in what ways, educational tasks are solved. It is also a motive for one's own growth, self-improvement, development of one's abilities.
The second component is learning task, those. a system of tasks in which the child masters the most common methods of action. The learning task must be distinguished from individual tasks. Usually children, when solving multi-specific problems, spontaneously discover for themselves a general way of solving them.
The third component is training operations, they are part of course of action. Operations and the learning task are considered to be the main link in the structure of learning activities. The operator content will be those specific actions that the child performs when solving particular problems.
The fourth component is the control. Initially, the teacher supervises the educational work of children. But gradually they begin to control it themselves, learning this partly spontaneously, partly under the guidance of a teacher. Without self-control, a full-fledged deployment of educational activities is impossible, therefore, teaching control is an important and complex pedagogical task.
The fifth component of the structure of educational activity is grade. The child, controlling his work, must learn and adequately evaluate it. At the same time, a general assessment is not enough - how correctly and efficiently the task was completed; you need an assessment of your actions - whether a method for solving problems has been mastered or not, which operations have not yet been worked out. The teacher, evaluating the work of students, is not limited to putting a mark. For the development of children's self-regulation, it is not the mark as such that is important, but meaningful assessment - an explanation of why this mark is placed, what are the pros and cons of the answer or written work.
Labor activity. With admission to school, the child is reorganized into a new labor system of relations. It is important that the knowledge and skills that he acquires at school are reflected and applied in the home work of a younger student.
Game activity. The game at this age takes the second place after the educational activity as a leading one and significantly affects the development of children. The formation of educational motives influence the development of gaming activities. Children of 3-5 years old enjoy the process of playing, and at 5-6 years old - not only from the process, but also from the result, i.e. win. In game motivation, the emphasis is shifted from the process to the result; in addition, developing achievement motivation.
In games according to the rules, typical for senior preschool and primary school age, the one who has mastered the game better wins. Games acquire more perfect forms, turn into developing ones. Individual object games acquire constructive character, they widely use new knowledge. At this age, it is important that the younger student is provided with a sufficient number of educational games and has time to practice them.
The very course of the development of children's play leads to the fact that game motivation gradually gives way to educational motivation, in which actions are performed for the sake of specific knowledge and skills, which, in turn, makes it possible to obtain approval, recognition from adults and peers, and a special status.
Communication. The scope and content of the child's communication with other people, especially adults, who act as teachers for younger students, serve as role models and the main source of various knowledge, are expanding.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
At primary school age, the basic cognitive processes develop.
Imagination.
Until the age of seven, children can only be found reproductive images-representations about known objects or events that are not perceived at a given moment in time, and these images are mostly static. Preschoolers, for example, have difficulty imagining intermediate positions of a falling stick between its vertical and horizontal positions.
Productive images-representations as a new combination of familiar elements appear in children after the age of 7-8, and the development of these images is probably associated with the beginning of schooling.
Perception.
At the beginning of primary school age, perception is not sufficiently differentiated. Because of this, the child sometimes confuses letters and numbers that are similar in spelling (for example, 9 and 6). A child can purposefully examine objects and drawings, but at the same time, just as in preschool age, they are distinguished by the most striking, “conspicuous” properties - mainly color, shape and size. In order for the student to more subtly analyze the qualities of objects, the teacher must carry out special work, teaching observation.
If preschoolers were characterized by analyzing perception, then by the end of primary school age, with appropriate training, there appears synthesizing perception. Developing intelligence makes it possible to establish connections between the elements of the perceived.
A. Binet and V. Stern called the stage of drawing perception at the age of 2-5 years enumeration stage, and at 6-9 years old - description stage. Later, after 9-10 years, a holistic description of the picture is supplemented by a logical explanation of the phenomena and events depicted on it ( interpretation stage).
Memory.
Memory in primary school age develops in two directions - arbitrariness and intelligibility.
Children involuntarily memorize educational material that arouses their interest, presented in a playful way, associated with vivid visual aids or memory images, etc. But, unlike preschoolers, they are able to purposefully, arbitrarily memorize material that is not interesting to them. Every year, more and more training is based on arbitrary memory.
The memory of children of primary school age is good, and this primarily concerns mechanical memory, which in the first three or four years of teaching at school progresses quite quickly. Slightly behind in its development indirect, logical memory(or semantic memory), since in most cases the child, being busy with learning, work, play and communication, completely manages with mechanical memory.
The improvement of semantic memory at this age goes through the comprehension of educational material. When a child comprehends the educational material, understands it, he remembers it at the same time. Thus, intellectual work is at the same time a mnemonic activity, thinking and semantic memory are inextricably linked.
Attention.
At the early school age, attention develops. Without sufficient formation of this mental function, the learning process is impossible.
Compared to preschoolers, younger students are much more attentive. They are already capable concentrate on uninteresting actions, in educational activities develops voluntary attention child.
However, younger students still predominate involuntary attention. For them, external impressions are a strong distraction, it is difficult for them to focus on incomprehensible complex material.
The attention of younger students is different small volume, low stability - they can focus on one thing for 10-20 minutes (while teenagers - 40-45 minutes, and high school students - up to 45-50 minutes). Difficulty distribution of attention and his switching from one learning task to another.
By the fourth grade of school, the volume, stability, and concentration of voluntary attention in younger schoolchildren are almost the same as in an adult. As for switchability, it is even higher at this age than the average for adults. This is due to the youth of the body and the mobility of processes in the central nervous system of the child.
Thinking.
Thinking becomes the dominant function in primary school age. The development of other mental functions depends on the intellect.
During the first three or four years of schooling, progress in the mental development of children can be quite noticeable. From dominance visual-effective and elementary figurative thinking, from pre-conceptual thinking schoolboy rises up verbal-logical thinking at the level of specific concepts.
According to the terminology of J. Piaget, the beginning of this age is associated with the dominance of pre-operational thinking, and the end - with the predominance of operational thinking in concepts.
In the process of learning from younger students scientific concepts are formed. Mastering the system of scientific concepts makes it possible to talk about the development of the fundamentals of conceptual or theoretical thinking. Theoretical thinking allows the student to solve problems, focusing not on external, visual signs and connections of objects, but on internal, essential properties and relationships. The development of theoretical thinking depends on how and what the child is taught, i.e. on the type of training.
At the end of primary school age (and later), individual differences appear: among children, psychologists distinguish groups "theorists" who easily solve learning problems verbally, "practitioners" who need reliance on visibility and action, and "artists" with vivid imagination. In most children, there is a relative balance between different types of thinking. At the same age, the general and special abilities of children are revealed quite well.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
The arrival of a child in school creates new conditions for the personal growth of a person. During this period of time, learning activity becomes the leading one for the child. In teaching and other activities at this time, many personal qualities of the child are formed.
Primary school age is sensitive for the development of such personal qualities of a child as diligence and independence.
industriousness arises as a consequence of repeatedly repeated success with sufficient effort. Favorable conditions for the development of industriousness For schoolchildren, it is created by the fact that at first educational activity presents great difficulties for them, which they have to overcome. This includes adaptation to new living conditions (daily routine, duties, requirements), and problems associated with learning to read, count and write, and new worries that a child has at school and at home.
In the development of industriousness, a reasonable system of rewarding the child for success plays an important role. It should be focused not on those achievements that are relatively easy and depend on the child's abilities, but on those that are difficult and are completely determined by the efforts made.
Independence children of primary school age is combined with their dependence on adults, so this age can become a turning point, critical for the formation of independence.
On the one hand, gullibility, obedience and openness, if they are excessively expressed, can make a child dependent, dependent, delay the development of this personality trait. On the other hand, too early emphasis only on autonomy and independence can give rise to disobedience and closeness, make it difficult for the child to acquire meaningful life experience through trust and imitation of other people. In order for neither of these undesirable tendencies to manifest itself, it is necessary to make sure that the education of independence and dependence is mutually balanced.
Communication. With the child entering school, changes occur in his relationship with other people. During school years the child's circle of friends expands and personal attachments become more permanent. Communication moves to a qualitatively higher level as children begin to get better understand the motives of actions of peers which helps to establish a good relationship with them.
In the initial period of schooling, at the age of 6 to 8 years, for the first time, informal groups of children with certain rules of behavior in them. However, these groups do not last long and are usually not stable enough in their composition.
Self-awareness. A feature of children of primary school age, which makes them similar to preschoolers, is boundless trust in adults, mainly teachers, obedience and imitation of them. Children of this age fully recognize the authority of an adult, almost unconditionally accept his assessments.
This feature of children's consciousness directly relates to such an important personal education, which is fixed at a given age, as self-esteem. It directly depends on the nature of the assessments given to an adult child and his success in various activities. Children, guided by the teacher's assessment, consider themselves and their peers to be excellent students, "losers" and "triples", good and average students, endowing the representatives of each group with a set of appropriate qualities. Assessment of progress at the beginning of schooling is, in essence, an assessment of the personality as a whole and determines the social status of the child.
In younger schoolchildren, unlike preschoolers, there are already self-assessments of various types: adequate, overestimated and underestimated. High achievers and some well-performing children develop inflated self-esteem. In underachieving and extremely weak students, systematic failures and low grades reduce their self-confidence, in their abilities, such children develop low self-esteem.
The development of self-awareness also depends on the development theoretical reflective thinking child. By the end of primary school age, reflection appears and thus new opportunities are created for the formation of self-esteem. It becomes, on the whole, more adequate and differentiated, judgments about oneself become more justified.
At the same time, there are significant individual differences in self-esteem. It should be emphasized that in children with high and low self-esteem, it is extremely difficult to change its level.
CONCLUSION:
Primary school age is the beginning of school life. Entering it, the child acquires the internal position of the student, educational motivation.
Learning activities becomes his leader.
During this period, the child develops theoretical thinking; he gets new knowledge, skills, abilities creates the necessary basis for all his subsequent training.
The development of the personality of a younger student depends on the effectiveness of educational activities. School performance is an important criterion for evaluating a child as a person. The status of an excellent student or underachiever is reflected in the self-assessment child, his self-respect and self-acceptance.
Successful study, awareness of one's abilities and skills lead to the formation sense of competence which, along with theoretical reflective thinking, becomes the central neoplasm of primary school age. If a sense of competence in educational activities is not formed, the child's self-esteem decreases and a feeling of inferiority arises; compensatory self-esteem and motivation may develop.
Ya. A. Comenius was the first who insisted on strict consideration of the age characteristics of children in educational work. He put forward and substantiated the principle of natural conformity, according to which training and education should correspond to the age stages of development (41).
Accounting for age characteristics is one of the fundamental pedagogical principles. Based on it, teachers regulate the teaching load, establish reasonable volumes of employment with various types of work, determine the most favorable daily routine for development, the mode of work and rest of the child.
Biologically, younger schoolchildren are going through a "period of the second rounding" (48, p. 136): in comparison with the previous age, their growth slows down and their weight noticeably increases; the skeleton undergoes ossification, but this process is not yet completed. There is an intensive development of the muscular system. With the development of the small muscles of the hand, the ability to perform subtle movements appears, thanks to which the child masters the skill of fast writing. Significantly increases muscle strength. All tissues of the child's body are in a state of growth. At primary school age, the nervous system improves, the functions of the cerebral hemispheres are intensively developed, and the analytical and synthetic functions of the cortex are enhanced. The weight of the brain at primary school age almost reaches the weight of the brain of an adult and increases to an average of 1400 grams. The mind of the child develops rapidly. The relationship between the processes of excitation and inhibition is changing: the process of inhibition becomes stronger, but the process of excitation still predominates, and younger students are highly excitable. Increases the accuracy of the senses. Compared to preschool age, color sensitivity increases by 45%, joint-muscular sensations improve by 50%, and visual sensations by 80% (48).
Intensive sensory development at preschool age provides the younger student with a level of perception sufficient for learning - high visual acuity, hearing, orientation to the shape and color of an object.
At the same time, syncretism, as well as high emotionality, remain features of the perception of younger students. Syncretism is manifested in the perception of “lumps”, which is characteristic of a preschooler and persists at primary school age. This feature makes it difficult to perform the analysis operations required in educational activities.
The initial period of school life occupies the age range from 6 to 10 years (grades 1-4). At primary school age, children have significant reserves of development. Their identification and effective use is one of the main tasks of developmental and educational psychology (58, p. 496). With the child entering school, under the influence of education, the restructuring of all his conscious processes begins, they acquire the qualities characteristic of adults, since children are included in new types of activity and a system of interpersonal relations. The general characteristics of all cognitive processes of the child are their arbitrariness, productivity and stability.
In order to skillfully use the reserves available to the child, it is necessary to adapt children to work at school and at home as soon as possible, teach them to study, to be attentive, diligent. By entering school, the child must have sufficiently developed self-control, labor skills, the ability to communicate with people, and role-playing behavior.
At primary school age, those basic human characteristics of cognitive processes are fixed and further developed: attention, perception, memory, imagination, thinking and speech.
In the initial period of educational work with children, one should, first of all, rely on those aspects of cognitive processes that are most developed in them, not forgetting, of course, the need for parallel improvement of the rest.
The attention of children by the time they enter school should become arbitrary, possessing the necessary volume, stability, and switchability. Since the difficulties that children face in practice at the beginning of schooling are connected precisely with the lack of attention development, it is necessary to take care of its improvement in the first place, preparing the preschooler for learning.
Attention at primary school age becomes voluntary, but for quite a long time, especially in the primary grades, involuntary attention in children remains strong and competes with voluntary attention. The volume and stability, switchability and concentration of voluntary attention to the third grade of school in children are almost the same as in an adult. Younger students can move from one type of activity to another without much difficulty and internal effort.
In a younger student, one of the types of perception of the surrounding reality can dominate: practical, figurative or logical.
The development of perception is manifested in its selectivity, meaningfulness, objectivity and a high level of formation of perceptual actions. The memory of children of primary school age is quite good. Memory gradually becomes arbitrary, mnemonics is mastered. From 6 to 10 years old, they actively develop mechanical memory for unrelated logical units of information. The older the younger student becomes, the more advantages he has of memorizing meaningful material over meaningless. Even more important than memory for children's learning is thinking. When entering school, it must be developed and presented in all three main forms: visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical. However, in practice, we often encounter a situation where, having the ability to solve problems well in a visually effective way, a child copes with them with great difficulty when these tasks are presented in a figurative, let alone verbal-logical form. It also happens vice versa: a child can reasonably conduct reasoning, have a rich imagination, figurative memory, but is not able to successfully solve practical problems due to insufficient development of motor skills and abilities.
During the first three to four years of schooling, progress in the mental development of children can be quite noticeable. From the dominance of a visual-effective and elementary way of thinking, from a pre-conceptual level of development and thinking poor in logic, the student rises to verbal-logical thinking at the level of specific concepts. The beginning of this age is connected, using the terminology of J. Piaget and L. S. Vygotsky, with the dominance of pre-operational thinking, and the end - with the predominance of operational thinking in concepts. At the same age, the general and special abilities of children are revealed quite well, which make it possible to judge their giftedness.
Primary school age contains a significant potential for the mental development of children. The complex development of children's intelligence in primary school age goes in several different directions:
- - assimilation and active use of speech as a means of thinking;
- - connection and mutually enriching influence on each other of all types of thinking: visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical;
- - allocation, isolation and relatively independent development in the intellectual process of two phases: preparatory phase (problem solution: analysis of its conditions is carried out and a plan is developed); executive phase - this plan is implemented in practice.
Visual-active and visual-figurative thinking dominates among first-graders and second-graders, while students of the third and fourth grades rely more on verbal-logical and figurative thinking, and they equally successfully solve problems in all three plans: practical, figurative and verbal -logical (verbal).
Deep and productive mental work requires perseverance from children, restraining emotions and regulating natural motor activity, focusing and maintaining attention. Many of the children quickly get tired, tired. A particular difficulty for children of 6-7 years of age, who begin to study at school, is the self-regulation of behavior. They do not have enough willpower to constantly keep themselves in a certain state, to control themselves.
Until the age of seven, children can only find reproductive images - ideas about events known to them that are not perceived at a given moment in time, and these images are mostly static. Productive images-representations of the result of a new combination of some elements appear in children in the process of special creative tasks. This creates an opportunity for children to develop the distribution of attention and, as a consequence, the development of polyphonic musical abilities.
The main activities that a child of this age is mostly engaged in at school and at home are teaching, communication, play and work. Each of the four types of activity characteristic of a child of primary school age: teaching, communication, play and work - performs specific functions in his development.
Teaching contributes to the acquisition of knowledge, skills and abilities, the development of abilities (including musical ones).
Of no small importance for success in learning are the communicative traits of the child's character, in particular, his sociability, contact, responsiveness and complaisance, as well as strong-willed personality traits: perseverance, purposefulness, perseverance and others.
A particularly important positive role in the intellectual development of younger schoolchildren is played by labor, which represents a relatively new type of activity for them. Labor improves the practical intellect necessary for various types of future professional creative activity. It should be quite varied and interesting for children. It is desirable to make any task at school or at home interesting and creative enough for the child, giving him the opportunity to think and make independent decisions. In work, the child's initiative and creative approach to work should be encouraged, and not only the work performed by him and its specific result.
Expansion of the scope and content of communication with other people, especially adults, who act as teachers for younger students, serve as role models and the main source of various knowledge. Collective forms of work that stimulate communication are nowhere so useful for the general development and mandatory for children as in primary school age. Communication improves the exchange of information, improves the communicative structure of the intellect, teaches how to correctly perceive, understand and evaluate children.
The game improves objective activity, logic and methods of thinking, forms and develops the skills of business interaction with people. Children's games also become different at this age, they acquire more perfect forms. Changes, enriched by newly acquired experience, their content. Individual object games acquire a constructive character, they widely use new knowledge, especially from the field of natural sciences, as well as the knowledge that children have acquired in labor classes at school. Group, collective games are intellectualized. At this age, it is important that the younger student is provided with a sufficient number of educational games at school and at home and has time to practice them. The game at this age continues to take second place after the educational activity (as the leading one) and significantly influence the development of children.
Of great interest to younger students are games that make you think, provide a person with the opportunity to test and develop their abilities, including them in competitions with other people. The participation of children in such games contributes to their self-affirmation, develops perseverance, the desire for success and other useful motivational qualities that children may need in their future adult life. In such games, thinking is improved, including the actions of planning, forecasting, weighing the chances of success, choosing alternatives, and the like.
Speaking about the motivational readiness of children to learn, one should also keep in mind the need to achieve success, the corresponding self-esteem and level of claims. The need to achieve success in a child, of course, must dominate over the fear of failure. In learning, communication and practical activities related to testing abilities, in situations involving competition with other people, children should show as little anxiety as possible. It is important that their self-assessment is adequate, and the level of claims is consistent with the real opportunities available to the child.
At primary school age, the character of the child is mainly formed, his main features are formed, which later influence the child's practical activities and his communication with people.
The abilities of children do not have to be formed by the beginning of schooling, especially those that continue to develop actively in the learning process. Another thing is more significant: that even in the preschool period of childhood, the child should form the necessary inclinations for the development of the necessary abilities.
Almost all children, playing a lot and in various ways at preschool age, have a well-developed and rich imagination. The main questions that in this area may still arise before the child and the teacher at the beginning of training relate to the connection between imagination and attention, the ability to regulate figurative representations through voluntary attention, as well as the assimilation of abstract concepts that it is enough to imagine and present to a child, as well as an adult. difficult.
In this age period, there are also changes in the structure of the relationship "child - adult", it becomes differentiated and is divided into substructures: "child - teacher" and "child - parents".
The "child-teacher" system begins to determine the relationship of the child to parents and the relationship of the child to children. B. G. Ananiev, L. I. Bozhovich, I. S. Slavitsa showed this experimentally. Good behavior and good grades are what construct a child's relationship with adults and peers. The “child-teacher” system becomes the center of a child’s life; the totality of all favorable conditions for life depends on it.
For the first time the relation "child - teacher" becomes the relation "child - society". Within the framework of relationships in the family, there is an inequality of relations, in kindergarten an adult acts as an individual, and at school the principle “everyone is equal before the law” operates. The teacher embodies the requirements of society, he is the bearer of the system of standards and measures for evaluation. Therefore, often, the student tries to imitate his teacher, thus approaching a certain "standard".
The situation "child - teacher" permeates the whole life of the child. If it’s good at school, then it’s good at home, which means it’s good with children too.
The malleability and well-known suggestibility of schoolchildren, their gullibility, tendency to imitate, the enormous authority enjoyed by the teacher, create favorable conditions for the formation of a highly moral personality. The foundations of moral behavior are laid precisely in elementary school; its role in the process of socialization of the individual is enormous.
From the foregoing, we can conclude: primary school age is a period of absorption, assimilation, accumulation of knowledge. This is the period of childhood most favorable for educational influences. It is characterized by trusting obedience to the authority of an adult, increased susceptibility, attentiveness. The main mental functions during this period reach a fairly high level, which becomes the basis for subsequent qualitative acquisitions of the psyche. Children at this age are receptive and impressionable, which ensures the dynamic cognitive and personal development of the child and creates the possibility of developing polyphonic musical abilities.
- 1. A teacher who stimulates the development of voluntary interest will have a formative effect on the mental development of the child.
- 2. At primary school age, imitation is based on imitation of the teacher.
- 3. The process of mastering analysis in children of primary school age begins with an emotional-sensory experience.
- 4. The education of a younger student leads to the development of his emotional and volitional abilities.
- 5. Awareness of the age characteristics of children of primary school age allows the music teacher to identify the forms, methods of his professional pedagogical activity aimed at developing the musical abilities of children of this age. Among them, a special place is occupied by the game.
- 6. The educational activity of younger students contributes to the development of cognitive abilities.
- 7. At primary school age, the arbitrariness and awareness of all mental processes and their intellectualization, their internal mediation, which occurs due to the assimilation of a system of scientific concepts, sets in.
Considering the features of the development of children of primary school age, we came to the main conclusion that in the development of polyphonic musical abilities, the teacher must be especially sensitive, proceed from the age characteristics of children, as well as a humane-personal approach, stand on the positions of a differentiated approach. The teacher should know the age characteristics of children, but the approach to each child should be individual. A sensitive teacher, using an individual approach, is able to influence the development of all parameters of attention in children, - “By managing attention, we take into our own hands the key to education and to the formation of personality and character”, - L.S. Vygotsky (68, p. 173). A differentiated approach to play activity involves the teacher's involvement in the game of each child, regardless of his age characteristics, type of temperament, knowledge, skills, etc.
The beginning of primary school age is determined by the moment the child enters school. The initial period of school life occupies the age range from 6-7 to 10-11 years (grades 1-4). At primary school age, children have significant reserves of development. During this period, the further physical and psychophysiological development of the child takes place, providing the possibility of systematic education at school.
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Junior school age (6 - 11 years old)
The beginning of primary school age is determined by the moment the child enters school. The initial period of school life occupies the age range from 6-7 to 10-11 years (grades 1-4). At primary school age, children have significant reserves of development. During this period, the further physical and psychophysiological development of the child takes place, providing the possibility of systematic education at school.
Physical development.First of all, the work of the brain and nervous system is improved. According to physiologists, by the age of 7 the cerebral cortex is already largely mature. However, the most important, specifically human parts of the brain, responsible for programming, regulation and control of complex forms of mental activity, have not yet completed their formation in children of this age (development of the frontal parts of the brain ends only by the age of 12). At this age, there is an active change of milk teeth, about twenty milk teeth fall out. The development and ossification of the limbs, spine and pelvic bones are at a stage of great intensity. Under unfavorable conditions, these processes can proceed with large anomalies. Intensive development of neuropsychic activity, high excitability of younger schoolchildren, their mobility and acute response to external influences are accompanied by rapid fatigue, which requires careful attitude to their psyche, skillful switching from one type of activity to another.
Harmful influences, in particular, can be exerted by physical overload (for example, prolonged writing, tiring physical work). Improper seating at the desk during class can lead to curvature of the spine, the formation of a sunken chest, etc. At primary school age, uneven psychophysiological development is noted in different children. Differences in the rates of development of boys and girls also persist: girls continue to outpace boys. Pointing to this, some scientists come to the conclusion that in fact in the lower grades “children of different ages sit at the same desk: on average, boys are younger than girls by a year and a half, although this difference is not in the calendar age.” An essential physical feature of younger schoolchildren is an increased growth of muscles, an increase in muscle mass and a significant increase in muscle strength. The increase in muscle strength and the general development of the motor apparatus determine the greater mobility of younger students, their desire for running, jumping, climbing and the inability to stay in the same position for a long time.
During the primary school age, significant changes occur not only in the physical development, but also in the mental development of the child: the cognitive sphere is qualitatively transformed, the personality is formed, a complex system of relations with peers and adults is formed.
cognitive development.The transition to systematic education makes high demands on the mental performance of children, which is still unstable in younger students, resistance to fatigue is low. And although these parameters increase with age, in general, the productivity and quality of work of younger students is about half that of the corresponding indicators of senior students.
Educational activity becomes the leading activity in primary school age. It determines the most important changes taking place in the development of the psyche of children at this age stage. Within the framework of educational activity, psychological neoplasms are formed that characterize the most significant achievements in the development of younger students and are the foundation that ensures development at the next age stage.
Primary school age is a period of intensive development and qualitative transformation of cognitive processes: they begin to acquire a mediated character and become conscious and arbitrary. The child gradually masters his mental processes, learns to control perception, attention, memory. A first grader remains a preschooler in terms of his mental development. It retains the peculiarities of thinking inherent in preschool age.
The dominant function in primary school age becomes thinking. Thought processes themselves are intensively developing and restructuring. The development of other mental functions depends on the intellect. The transition from visual-figurative to verbal-logical thinking is being completed. The child develops logically correct reasoning. School education is structured in such a way that verbal and logical thinking is predominantly developed. If in the first two years of schooling children work a lot with visual samples, then in the next classes the volume of this kind of work is reduced.
Figurative thinking is becoming less and less necessary in educational activities.At the end of primary school age (and later) there are individual differences: among children. Psychologists single out groups of "theorists" or "thinkers" who easily solve learning problems verbally, "practitioners" who need reliance on visualization and practical actions, and "artists" with vivid imaginative thinking. In most children, there is a relative balance between different types of thinking.
Perception younger schoolchildren is not differentiated enough. Because of this, the child sometimes confuses letters and numbers that are similar in spelling (for example, 9 and 6). In the process of learning, perception is restructured, it rises to a higher level of development, takes on the character of a purposeful and controlled activity. In the process of learning, perception deepens, becomes more analyzing, differentiating, and takes on the character of organized observation.
It is during the early school years that it develops Attention. Without the formation of this mental function, the learning process is impossible. At the lesson, the teacher draws the attention of students to the educational material, holds it for a long time. A younger student can focus on one thing for 10-20 minutes.
Some age features are inherent in the attention of primary school students. The main one is the weakness of voluntary attention. The possibilities of volitional regulation of attention, its management at the beginning of primary school age are limited. Involuntary attention is much better developed at primary school age. Everything new, unexpected, bright, interesting by itself attracts the attention of students, without any effort on their part.
The sanguine person is mobile, restless, talks, but his answers in the lessons indicate that he is working with the class. Phlegmatic and melancholy are passive, lethargic, seem inattentive. But in fact, they are focused on the subject being studied, as evidenced by their answers to the teacher's questions. Some children are inattentive. The reasons for this are different: some have laziness of thought, others have a lack of a serious attitude to learning, others have an increased excitability of the central nervous system, etc.
Primary schoolchildren initially remember not what is most significant in terms of educational tasks, but what made the greatest impression on them: what is interesting, emotionally colored, unexpected or new. Younger students have a good mechanical memory. Many of them mechanically memorize study tests throughout their education in elementary school, which leads to significant difficulties in the middle classes, when the material becomes more complex and larger in volume.
Among schoolchildren, there are often children who, in order to memorize the material, only need to read a section of the textbook once or carefully listen to the teacher's explanation. These children not only memorize quickly, but also retain what they have learned for a long time, and easily reproduce it. There are also children who quickly memorize educational material, but also quickly forget what they have learned. Usually on the second or third day they already poorly reproduce the learned material. In such children, first of all, it is necessary to form an attitude for long-term memorization, to teach them to control themselves. The most difficult case is slow memorization and quick forgetting of educational material. These children must be patiently taught the techniques of rational memorization. Sometimes poor memorization is associated with overwork, so a special regimen is needed, a reasonable dosage of training sessions. Very often, poor memory results do not depend on a low level of memory, but on poor attention.
Communication. Usually, the needs of younger students, especially those who were not brought up in kindergarten, are initially personal. A first-grader, for example, often complains to the teacher about his neighbors who allegedly interfere with his listening or writing, which indicates his concern for personal success in learning. In the first class interaction with classmates through the teacher (me and my teacher). Grade 3 - 4 - the formation of a children's team (we and our teacher).
There are likes and dislikes. There are requirements for personal qualities.
A children's team is formed. The more referential the class, the more the child depends on how his peers evaluate him. In the third - fourth grade, there is a sharp turn from the interests of an adult to the interests of peers (secrets, headquarters, ciphers, etc.).
Emotional development.The instability of behavior, depending on the emotional state of the child, complicates both the relationship with the teacher and the collective work of children in the classroom. In the emotional life of children of this age, first of all, the content side of experiences changes. If the preschooler is happy that they play with him, share toys, etc., then the younger student is mainly concerned about what is connected with teaching, school, and the teacher. He is pleased that the teacher and parents are praised for academic success; and if the teacher makes sure that the feeling of joy from educational work arises in the student as often as possible, then this reinforces the positive attitude of the student to learning. Along with the emotion of joy, emotions of fear are of no small importance in the development of the personality of a junior schoolchild. Often, because of fear of punishment, children tell lies. If this is repeated, then cowardice and deceit are formed. In general, the experiences of a younger student are sometimes very violent.At primary school age, the foundation of moral behavior is laid, the assimilation of moral norms and rules of behavior takes place, and the social orientation of the individual begins to form.
The nature of younger students differs in some features. First of all, they are impulsive - they tend to act immediately under the influence of immediate impulses, motives, without thinking and weighing all the circumstances, for random reasons. The reason is the need for active external discharge with age-related weakness of volitional regulation of behavior.
An age-related feature is also a general lack of will: the younger student does not yet have much experience in a long struggle for the intended goal, overcoming difficulties and obstacles. He can give up in case of failure, lose faith in his strengths and impossibilities. Often there is capriciousness, stubbornness. The usual reason for them is the shortcomings of family education. The child is accustomed to the fact that all his desires and requirements are satisfied, he did not see a refusal in anything. Capriciousness and stubbornness are a peculiar form of a child's protest against the firm demands that the school makes on him, against the need to sacrifice what he wants for the sake of what he needs.
Younger students are very emotional. Emotionality affects, firstly, that their mental activity is usually colored by emotions. Everything that children observe, what they think about, what they do, evokes an emotionally colored attitude in them. Secondly, younger students do not know how to restrain their feelings, to control their external manifestation. Thirdly, emotionality is expressed in their great emotional instability, frequent mood swings, a tendency to affect, short-term and violent manifestations of joy, grief, anger, fear. Over the years, the ability to regulate their feelings, to restrain their undesirable manifestations, develops more and more.
CONCLUSION
Younger students will have a very important moment in their lives - the transition to the middle school. This transition deserves the most serious attention. This is due to the fact that it radically changes the conditions of the teaching. The new conditions make higher demands on the development of thinking, perception, memory and attention of children, on their personal development, as well as the degree of formation of educational knowledge, educational actions, and the level of development of arbitrariness among students.
However, the level of development of a significant number of students barely reaches the necessary limit, and for a fairly large group of schoolchildren, the level of development is clearly insufficient for the transition to the secondary link.
The task of the primary school teacher and parents is to know and take into account the psychological characteristics of children of primary school age in teaching and educating, conducting a complex of corrective work with children using various games, tasks, exercises.
Age features of children of primary school age
The main pedagogical task is the education and development of the individual. Many teachers believed that in the process of education and training, a deep study of age characteristics and their consideration in a practical aspect plays a huge role. This issue was addressed, in particular, by L.A. Comenius, D.Zh. Locke, J.J. Rousseau, and later K.D. Ushinsky, L.N. Tolstoy and many others. In addition, some of them even developed a pedagogical theory based on the idea of the natural consonance of education and upbringing, that is, taking into account the natural characteristics of age-related development. But they covered this idea differently. For example, Comenius Ya.A. put into this concept the idea of taking into account in the process of education and upbringing the patterns of child development inherent in human nature, or rather: the innate human desire for knowledge, for work, and the ability for multilateral development.Zh.Zh. Rousseau, and then L.N. Tolstoy interpreted this question differently: based on the fact that a child is by nature a perfect being, upbringing and education should not violate this natural perfection, but should follow it, revealing and developing the best qualities of children. Nevertheless, they all agreed that it is necessary to carefully study the child, to know his age characteristics and rely on them in the process of education and training.
Consider the age characteristics of children of primary school age.
Entering the first grade of a general education school, the child ceases to be a preschooler and passes into the category of a junior schoolchild. Studying in the primary grades, the child belongs to the primary school age, i.e. primary school age is the years of life from 6 to 11 years.
The very transition from a preschooler to a junior schoolchild is considered to be a crisis of seven years. It is at this point that many behavioral changes occur in children. The child becomes more difficult in educational terms, at this age he, as Vygotsky L. S. writes, “loses naivety and spontaneity, in behavior, in relations with others, becomes not as understandable in all manifestations as he was before.” It becomes very difficult to communicate with children of seven years of age. They become very capricious, constantly irritated, begin to behave, become not so sincere, you can see a lot of feigned in their behavior. Children begin to look like clowns, clowning around a lot. Also, disobedience is often observed in the behavior of the child, children at this age want to do everything the other way around, not in the way they are required to. They become deliberately stubborn, it is very difficult to deal with them.
It is important to know that at the age of seven children a special structure of experiences arises. When a child begins to understand what “I am pleased”, “I am upset”, “I am angry”, “I am cheerful”, “I am kind”, “I am angry” means, he begins to deliberately navigate his experiences. In view of this, the characteristic features of the seven-year crisis come forward.
1. Experiences make sense (embittered child is aware of his anger). In view of this, the child begins to relate to himself in a new way.
2. During this period, for the first time, a generalization of experiences, or an affective generalization, the logic of feelings, arises. There are children who experience failure at every step. For example, when children who develop normally play, a child who is a loser wants to join them, but he is refused, he is mocked. At this point, he has a momentary reaction about his own insufficiency, and a minute later he is again pleased with himself. Thousands of individual failures, but no overall sense of his own little worth, he does not generalize what has happened many times already. The student has a generalization of feelings, i.e. if a situation has happened to him several times, an affective formation arises in him, the nature of which is just as related to a single experience, or affect, as a concept is related to a single perception or memory. For example, a child of preschool age does not have real self-esteem, pride. The level of our requests to ourselves, to our success, to our position arises precisely in connection with the crisis of seven years.
Thus, the crisis of 7 years arises on the basis of the emergence of personal consciousness. The main symptoms of the crisis:
1) loss of immediacy. Wedged between desire and action is the experience of what significance this action will have for the child himself;
2) mannerisms; the child builds something out of himself, hides something (the soul is already closed);
3) a symptom of "bitter candy": the child feels bad, but he tries not to show it. Difficulties in upbringing arise, the child begins to withdraw and becomes uncontrollable.
These symptoms are based on the generalization of experiences. A new inner life has arisen in the child, a life of experiences that is not directly and immediately superimposed on the outer life. But this inner life is not indifferent to the outer, it influences it.
The emergence of inner life is an extremely important fact; now the orientation of behavior will be carried out within this inner life. The crisis requires a transition to a new social situation, requires a new content of relations. The child must enter into relations with society as a set of people who carry out compulsory, socially necessary and socially useful activities. In our conditions, the tendency towards it is expressed in the desire to go to school as soon as possible. Often the higher stage of development that a child reaches by the age of seven is confused with the problem of the child's readiness for schooling.
At the physiological level, the crisis of seven years is explained by the fact that the child begins to grow much faster, which indicates that a number of changes are taking place throughout his body. Vygotsky L. S. writes: “This age is called the age of changing teeth, the age of stretching. Indeed, the child changes dramatically, and the changes are deeper, more complex than the changes that are observed during the crisis of three years. At the age of 6-7 years, children complete the maturation of the frontal part of the cerebral hemispheres. This creates an opportunity for the implementation of purposeful arbitrary behavior, planning actions. By the age of seven, the mobility of nervous processes increases, but excitation processes predominate. This determines such characteristic features of children as restlessness, increased emotional excitability. The child is open to the influence of adverse factors. At the same time, the level of the neuropsychic response of the child to various "harmful things" changes. So, if for some reason a preschooler feels bad, then he may experience psychomotor agitation, tics, stuttering. Primary school age is characterized by an increase in general emotional excitability and impulsivity, symptoms and syndromes of fears, manifestations of aggression or negativism.
In addition, it is worth noting that during this period of life, the skeletal and muscular systems begin to develop intensively in children, which means that the choreographer should pay special attention to posture. Also, the bones of the hand and fingers continue to form in children, so it is difficult for them to make small and precise movements with these parts of the body, working with them tires them very much. It is equally important to know that great changes are taking place throughout the child's body. Not only bone and muscle tissue, but also the central nervous system, autonomic and all internal organs begin to develop intensively. Such a restructuring in the body occurs due to the fact that the "new" endocrine glands are turned on and at the same time the "old" glands cease to function. Thus, an endocrine shift occurs, requiring a huge expenditure of strength and energy from the child's body to mobilize all reserves.
At the age of 6-11 years there are peculiarities in the organization of the movement. It is much easier for children to perform sweeping, large movements; small technique is very difficult for them. This is explained by the fact that muscle development and methods of controlling it do not occur simultaneously. The development of large muscles occurs faster than the development of small ones.
Despite the fact that children's physical endurance is growing, at the psychological level they cannot concentrate on one thing for a long time, they still do not know how to concentrate, as a result of which interest quickly fades, and they get tired very quickly. However, children at this age are very vulnerable. The younger school age is characterized by the fact that the teacher is an authority for the child (for example, in adolescence, this niche is occupied by peers). Therefore, the teacher must carefully weigh his words addressed to the child in order to avoid the emergence of complexes and resentment.
Also, children of 7-11 years old do not yet have high working capacity. Therefore, the lesson should not be emotionally oversaturated, and the volume of the given material should be limited by the physical capabilities of the children.
When entering school, not every child develops the right attitude towards learning. Teaching is a serious work that requires great willpower, organization and discipline. Not every junior student is able to understand why he needs it at all. In order for the child not to develop a negative attitude towards learning, he needs to be made clear that learning is not a game, but hard work, but very interesting, as a result of which the child learns a lot of new and cognitive things. The child must understand that teaching is very important and necessary, that without it he will never become an interesting person, and his life will be boring. At first, children will develop an interest in the learning process itself without understanding its meaning, then interest in the results of learning activities, and only then in its content, i.e. to the acquisition of knowledge. The teacher should support the child and praise for his achievements in order to reinforce the students' interest in learning. Children should derive satisfaction from their own efforts. Thus, the ground will be created for the formation of motivation and, accordingly, for the responsible attitude of younger students to learning.
The teacher should remember that in order to maximize the opportunities of students, it is necessary to adapt them as soon as possible to work at school and at home, to adapt and teach to be attentive, to form perseverance. With the advent of school, children, as a rule, have a fairly developed control over their emotions, feelings, desires, work skills and abilities. They know how to communicate with people, socialized.
This age is characterized by the beginning of intensive growth and qualitative transformation of cognitive processes. These processes acquire a conditional character and become conscious and arbitrary. Children gradually master mental processes, learn to control memory and attention. They should be given special attention.
Let's consider these processes one by one.
1. Memory at the age of 6-11 develops in two directions. The first is arbitrary memory. The educational material that resonates in the area of his interests, and is taught by the teacher in a playful way, is also associated with bright visual aids, is easy to remember. In other words, involuntarily. In turn, the material that is not particularly interesting to them, is difficult to perceive, and is also new in form and content, unlike preschoolers, younger students are able to memorize arbitrarily. Hence the second direction of memory development - meaningful. But it should be noted that learning is largely based on arbitrary, that is, meaningful memory. In turn, the teacher-choreographer needs to take this aspect into account, both for training semantic memory and for creating game moments in the lesson for rote memorization.
2. It cannot be said that the development of attention, on which the entire learning process is built, both in the general education sphere and in the field of additional education, which is choreographic art, develops intensively precisely with the beginning of the school life of students, that is, at primary school age. The child can already concentrate on one type of activity from 10 to 20 minutes. This must be taken into account when changing the forms of activity during the lesson, alternating serious activities with game forms of learning in order to switch and keep attention.
The nature of younger students is characterized by impulsiveness - they can suddenly act under the influence of immediate desires, impulses. Why is this happening? First, the mental activity of a younger student is usually colored by emotions. Everything that children see, feel, think about, do, evokes an emotionally colored attitude in them. Secondly, children aged 6-11 do not know how not only to hide, but also to restrain their feelings, it is difficult for them to control their visible manifestation, they are still spontaneous in expressing delight and joy. Thirdly, emotionality is expressed in frequent mood swings, a tendency to inappropriate actions, short-term and violent manifestations of both positive manifestations, such as joy, and negative manifestations, such as anger or fear. Over the years, a person acquires the ability to restrain, limit their undesirable manifestations, and therefore a teacher plays a large role in shaping a successful personality.
Also, we must not forget that primary school age is the age when an active formation of personality takes place. It is for him that new relationships are characteristic. And both with teachers and with their classmates.
Students of this age are forming and establishing a new system of relations between people, in the student team, the attitude to duties is changing, thereby giving rise to character, will, increasing the range of interests, revealing and developing abilities.
At the same time, the aspect of moral behavior, moral norms and ethical rules is formed. We see the birth of a person.
List of sources used
1. Vygotsky L. S. Crisis of seven years. cit.: 6 vol. - M, 1984.
2. Vygotsky L. S. Psychology of child development, Meaning, 2005.
3. Comenius Ya. A. Great didactics, Minsk, 2008.
Age features of children of primary school age
Knowing and taking into account the age characteristics of children of primary school age make it possible to correctly build educational work in the classroom. Every teacher should know these features and take them into account when working with primary school children.
Junior school age is the age of 6-11-year-old children studying in grades 1 - 3 (4) of primary school.
This is the age of relatively calm and even physical development. The increase in height and weight, endurance, vital capacity of the lungs is quite even and proportional. The skeletal system of a junior schoolchild is still in the formative stage. The process of ossification of the hand and fingers at primary school age is also not yet completely completed, so small and precise movements of the fingers and hand are difficult and tiring. There is a functional improvement of the brain - the analytical-systematic function of the cortex develops; the ratio of the processes of excitation and inhibition gradually changes: the process of inhibition becomes more and more strong, although the process of excitation still predominates, and younger students are highly excitable and impulsive.
The beginning of school education means the transition from playing activity to learning as the leading activity of primary school age. Going to school makes a huge difference in a child's life. The whole way of his life, his social position in the team, family changes dramatically. Teaching becomes the main, leading activity, the most important duty is the duty to learn, to acquire knowledge. And teaching is a serious work that requires organization, discipline, strong-willed efforts of the child.
It takes a long time for younger students to form the right attitude towards learning. They do not yet understand why they need to study. But it soon turns out that teaching is a labor that requires strong-willed efforts, mobilization of attention, intellectual activity, and self-restraint. If the child is not used to this, then he gets disappointed, a negative attitude towards learning arises. In order to prevent this from happening, it is necessary to instill in the child the idea that learning is not a holiday, not a game, but serious, hard work, but very interesting, as it will allow you to learn a lot of new, entertaining, important, necessary things.
At first, elementary school students study well, guided by their relationships in the family, sometimes a child studies well based on relationships with the team. Personal motive also plays an important role: the desire to get a good grade, the approval of teachers and parents.
At first, he develops an interest in the very process of learning activity without realizing its significance. Only after the emergence of interest in the results of their educational work, an interest is formed in the content of educational activities, in the acquisition of knowledge. It is this basis that is a fertile ground for the formation in the younger schoolchild of the motives for teaching a high social order, associated with a responsible attitude to studies.
The formation of interest in the content of educational activities, the acquisition of knowledge is associated with the experience of schoolchildren's sense of satisfaction from their achievements. And this feeling is reinforced by the approval, praise of the teacher, who emphasizes every, even the smallest success, the smallest progress forward. Younger students experience a sense of pride, a special upsurge of strength when the teacher praises them.
Educational activity in the primary grades stimulates, first of all, the development of mental processes of direct knowledge of the surrounding world - sensations and perceptions. Younger students are distinguished by sharpness and freshness of perception, a kind of contemplative curiosity. The younger student perceives the environment with lively curiosity.
At the beginning of primary school age, perception is not sufficiently differentiated. Because of this, the child "sometimes confuses letters and numbers that are similar in spelling (for example, 9 and 6 or the letters I and R). Although he can purposefully examine objects and drawings, he stands out, just like at preschool age, the brightest, "conspicuous" properties - mainly color, shape and size. If preschoolers were characterized by analyzing perception, then by the end of primary school age, with appropriate training, a synthesizing perception appears. The developing intellect creates the ability to establish connections between the elements of the perceived. This can be easily traced when children describe the picture. Age stages of perception:
- 2-5 years - the stage of listing objects in the picture;
- 6-9 years old - description of the picture;
- after 9 years - interpretation of what he saw.
The next feature of the perception of students at the beginning of primary school age is its close connection with the actions of the student. Perception at this level of development is connected with the practical activity of the child. To perceive an object for a child means to do something with it, to change something in it, to perform some action, to take it, to touch it. A characteristic feature of students is a pronounced emotionality of perception.
In the process of learning, perception deepens, becomes more analyzing, differentiating, and takes on the character of organized observation.
It is during the early school years that it develops Attention. Without the formation of this mental function, the learning process is impossible. A younger student can focus on one thing for 10-20 minutes.
Some age features are inherent in the attention of primary school students. The main one is the weakness of voluntary attention. If older students maintain voluntary attention even in the presence of distant motivation (they can force themselves to focus on uninteresting and difficult work for the sake of a result that is expected in the future), then a younger student can usually force himself to work with concentration only if there is a close motivation (the prospect of getting an excellent mark, earn the praise of the teacher, do the best job, etc.).
Involuntary attention is much better developed at primary school age. Everything new, unexpected, bright, interesting by itself attracts the attention of students, without any effort on their part.
The individual characteristics of the personality of younger schoolchildren influence the nature of attention. For example, in children of a sanguine temperament, apparent inattention manifests itself in excessive activity. The sanguine person is mobile, restless, talks, but his answers in the lessons indicate that he is working with the class. Phlegmatic and melancholy are passive, lethargic, seem inattentive. But in fact, they are focused on the subject being studied, as evidenced by their answers to the teacher's questions. Some children are inattentive. The reasons for this are different: some have laziness of thought, others have a lack of a serious attitude to learning, others have an increased excitability of the central nervous system, etc.
Age features of memory in primary school age develop under the influence of learning. Primary schoolchildren have a more developed visual-figurative memory than a verbal-logical one. They better, faster remember and more firmly retain in memory specific information, events, persons, objects, facts than definitions, descriptions, explanations. Younger students are prone to rote memorization without realizing the semantic connections within the memorized material.
Memorization techniques serve as an indicator of arbitrariness. First, this is a multiple reading of the material, then the alternation of reading and retelling. To memorize the material, it is very important to rely on visual material (manuals, models, pictures).
Repetitions should be varied, some new educational task should become before the students. Even the rules, laws, definitions of concepts that need to be learned verbatim can not just be memorized. To memorize such material, the younger student must know why he needs it. It has been established that children memorize words much better if they are included in a game or some kind of labor activity. For better memorization, you can use the moment of friendly competition, the desire to receive praise from the teacher, an asterisk in a notebook, a good mark. The productivity of memorization also increases the comprehension of the memorized material. Ways of understanding the material are different. For example, to keep in memory some text, story, fairy tale, drawing up a plan is of great importance.
It is accessible and useful for the smallest to draw up a plan in the form of a sequential series of pictures. If there are no illustrations, then you can name which picture should be drawn at the beginning of the story, which one later. Then the pictures should be replaced with a list of main thoughts: "What is said at the beginning of the story? What parts can the whole story be divided into? What is the name of the first part? What is the main thing? Thus, they learn to remember not only individual facts, events, but also the connections between them.
Among schoolchildren, there are often children who, in order to memorize the material, only need to read a section of the textbook once or carefully listen to the teacher's explanation. These children not only memorize quickly, but also retain what they have learned for a long time, and easily reproduce it. There are also children who quickly memorize educational material, but also quickly forget what they have learned. In such children, first of all, it is necessary to form an attitude for long-term memorization, to teach them to control themselves. The most difficult case is slow memorization and quick forgetting of educational material. These children must be patiently taught the techniques of rational memorization. Sometimes poor memorization is associated with overwork, so a special regimen is needed, a reasonable dosage of training sessions. Very often, poor memory results do not depend on a low level of memory, but on poor attention.
The main trend in the development of imagination in primary school age is the improvement of the recreative imagination. It is associated with the presentation of previously perceived or the creation of images in accordance with a given description, diagram, drawing, etc. The recreating imagination is improved due to an increasingly correct and complete reflection of reality. Creative imagination as the creation of new images, associated with the transformation, processing of impressions of past experience, combining them into new combinations, combinations, is also developing.
The dominant function in primary school age becomes thinking. School education is structured in such a way that verbal-logical thinking is predominantly developed. If in the first two years of education children work a lot with visual samples, then in the next classes the volume of such activities is reduced. Figurative thinking is becoming less and less necessary in educational activities.
Thinking begins to reflect the essential properties and features of objects and phenomena, which makes it possible to make the first generalizations, the first conclusions, draw the first analogies, and build elementary conclusions. On this basis, the child gradually begins to form elementary scientific concepts.
Motives for learning
Among the various social motives for learning, the main place among younger students is occupied by the motive of getting high marks. High grades for a small student are a source of other rewards, a guarantee of his emotional well-being, a source of pride.
In addition, there are other motives:
Internal motives:
1) Cognitive motives- those motives that are associated with the content or structural characteristics of the educational activity itself: the desire to acquire knowledge; the desire to master the ways of self-acquisition of knowledge; 2) Social motives- motives associated with factors influencing the motives of learning, but not related to educational activities: the desire to be a literate person, to be useful to society; the desire to get the approval of senior comrades, to achieve success, prestige; the desire to master ways of interacting with other people, classmates. Achievement motivation in primary school often becomes dominant. Children with high academic performance have a pronounced motivation to achieve success - the desire to do the task well, correctly, to get the desired result. Motivation to avoid failure. Children try to avoid the "deuce" and the consequences that a low mark entails - teacher dissatisfaction, parents' sanctions (they will scold, forbid walking, watching TV, etc.).
External motives- study for good grades, for material reward, i.е. The main thing is not getting knowledge, but some kind of reward.
The development of learning motivation depends on the assessment, it is on this basis that in some cases there are difficult experiences and school maladaptation. School assessment directly affects the formation self-esteem. Children, guided by the teacher's assessment, consider themselves and their peers as excellent students, "losers" and "triples", good and average students, endowing the representatives of each group with a set of appropriate qualities. Assessment of progress at the beginning of schooling is, in essence, an assessment of the personality as a whole and determines the social status of the child. High achievers and some well-performing children develop inflated self-esteem. For underachieving and extremely weak students, systematic failures and low grades reduce their self-confidence, in their abilities. Educational activity is the main activity for a younger student, and if the child does not feel competent in it, his personal development is distorted.
Special attention is always required for hyperactive children with attention deficit disorder.
It is necessary to form voluntary attention. Training sessions must be built according to a strict schedule. Ignore defiant actions and pay attention to good deeds. Provide motor discharge.
Left-handed, who have a reduced ability of visual-motor coordination. Children draw images poorly, have poor handwriting, and cannot keep a line. Distortion of form, specular writing. Skipping and rearranging letters when writing. Errors in determining "right" and "left". Special strategy of information processing. Emotional instability, resentment, anxiety, reduced performance. Special conditions are necessary for adaptation: a right-hand spread in a notebook, do not require a continuous letter, it is recommended to plant it by the window, to the left at the desk.
Children with disorders of the emotional-volitional sphere. These are aggressive children, emotionally disinhibited, shy, anxious, vulnerable.
All this must be taken into account not only by the teacher in the classroom, but first of all at home, by the people closest to the child, on whom it largely depends on how the child will react to possible school failures and what lessons he will learn from them.
Primary school age is the age of a fairly noticeable formation of personality. At primary school age, the foundation of moral behavior is laid, the assimilation of moral norms and rules of behavior takes place, and the social orientation of the individual begins to form.
The nature of younger students differs in some features. First of all, they are impulsive - they tend to act immediately under the influence of immediate impulses, motives, without thinking and weighing all the circumstances, for random reasons. The reason is the need for active external discharge with age-related weakness of volitional regulation of behavior.
An age-related feature is also a general lack of will: the younger student does not yet have much experience in a long struggle for the intended goal, overcoming difficulties and obstacles. He can give up in case of failure, lose faith in his strengths and impossibilities. Often there is capriciousness, stubbornness. The usual reason for them is the shortcomings of family education. The child is accustomed to the fact that all his desires and requirements are satisfied, he did not see a refusal in anything. Capriciousness and stubbornness are a peculiar form of a child's protest against the firm demands that the school makes on him, against the need to sacrifice what he wants for the sake of what he needs.
Younger students are very emotional. Everything that children observe, what they think about, what they do, evokes an emotionally colored attitude in them. Secondly, younger students do not know how to restrain their feelings, control their external manifestation, they are very direct and frank in expressing joy, grief, sadness, fear, pleasure or displeasure. Thirdly, emotionality is expressed in their great emotional instability, frequent mood swings. Over the years, the ability to regulate their feelings, to restrain their undesirable manifestations, develops more and more.
Great opportunities are provided by the primary school age for the education of collectivist relations. For several years, the younger schoolchild accumulates, with proper education, the experience of collective activity, which is important for his further development - activity in a team and for a team. The upbringing of collectivism is helped by the participation of children in public, collective affairs. It is here that the child acquires the basic experience of collective social activity.