Reading and Writing Strategies
The two age groups from different periods in the physical development process are the early childhood development and the early adolescence development. The early childhood development is classified from the ages of two to six years old.
Early childhood usually falls in the time where children are in preschool and their language skills develop dramatically. The early adolescence period is from the ages ten to fourteen years old (University of Phoenix, 2004). I chose these two developmental periods because I found them most interesting and they are both very different from the other one.The expected reading development in early childhood children and early adolescent children is greatly different. Early childhood children have a very short attention span at the beginning on this stage so it is very hard for them to sit still for long enough to understand the concept of reading. Young children usually enjoy being read to but they will very rarely sit with their caregiver for long enough to read an entire book.
Once the child reaches the middle of the early childhood stage they have been read to many times so they will start to understand the concept of reading.The child can recognize most letters by their correct name and then use the sound of it to try to read the word. Early adolescence children usually do not have any problems with reading. All books with words in their vocabulary are easy for them to read and they usually enjoy reading. Children from ten to fourteen years old have a large vocabulary that includes complex words (University of Phoenix, 2004). Reading is no longer a hassle because they are passed the stage of sounding out words and putting words together.
The expected writing development is also very different in early childhood children and early adolescence children.The younger group of children goes through a variety of stages that have to do with their writing development. From the ages of two to three the child’s writing development is simply limited to drawing things purposely, as opposed to scribbling. The child has also mastered how to hold the drawing utensil with their index finger and thumb. By the age of three and a half the child can purposely drawing patterns repeatedly such as lines or circle. The child can also fully understand that concept of writing while being able to draw a select group of letters.
By the age of four the child can easily write small words but they are usually misspelled. The child writes the word how it sounds instead of the actual spelling of the word. By the time that the child turns six years old he or she can write their name correctly along with multiple words (University of Phoenix, 2004). Children in the early adolescence stage can write very complexly. Children from ten to fourteen are able to change their sentence structure to make their writing more interesting and write more sophistically.Usually children in the older age group are assigned homework in the form of writing short essay and a lot of their schoolwork involves writing of some sort.
Children in the early adolescence age group usually have a vocabulary around 50,000 words so it is not a large task to ask them to write a short paper or story (University of Phoenix, 2004). It is obvious that reading and writing activities are a necessity in order for children to benefit from going to school and they are needed for the child’s knowledge to improve.Children in the early childhood development stage need a lot of repetitively and patience because they are so young and not used to learning in a classroom environment. Teachers need to focus their reading activities to kid friendly books and stories that will keep the children intrigued. A good activity that should be used for children two to six years old would be to get all of the kids close together to read a story and then encourage them to ask questions. Towards the end of this age group it would also be a good idea to have them take turns reading different pages.
In the beginning of the early childhood stage, a good writing activity would be to have the children draw freely and encourage them to make shapes of letters. Tracing letters on paper is also an excellent activity to get the children used to writing the different letters. Towards the end of the early childhood age group the children could keep a journal and have a set amount of time every day to write an entry into their journal. The journal would encourage them to write because they have the time set aside to do so and it will also track their progress by being able to see how much their writing has improved by the end of the class.Children in the early adolescence stage have been reading and writing for a long time now but they still need to have activities in the classroom to keep improving and expanding their skills.
Teachers should assign books that need to be read in a certain about of time for their reading activities. A good writing activity to follow up on the book that was assigned would be to write a short summary of the book. To add even more of a writing assignment the teacher could make a list of words that had to be used by the student in the summary or give them a list of points in the book that need to be addressed in the paper.To strengthen the child’s reading and writing skills, in both age categories, the teacher should simply point out what the child is doing wrong and help them to correct them. It is a necessity to point out the child’s flaws in their work or else the will never knows what they are doing wrong (University of Phoenix, 2004). Another good thing for the teacher to do to strengthen the child’s skills would be to make sure it is known that they are there to help.
A lot of times if the teacher just listens to the child they can figure out the problem and solve it together.Repeating the information is a must when it comes to being a teacher because the more times that a child hears the information, then the better that it will stay in their brain! Overall, both age groups have a lot of the same characteristics when it comes to their reading and writing skills but they are different in some ways. I think that it would be a joy to teach either age but it also comes with a great responsibility. It is up to the teachers to give as much knowledge as possible to our future leaders. Resources University of Phoenix. (2004).
Language Development. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, AED202 website.
