Week 11 — Middle Childhood: Physical and Cognitive Development

Why this matters

An elementary teacher planning a lesson and an after-school program leader running a board game both need to read how school-age children reason.

In plain language

This chapter is about the school years, from about 6 to 11, when children's bodies grow steadily and their thinking becomes more logical. A school-age child can reason about real things in front of them, which Piaget called the concrete operational stage (logical thinking about concrete objects and events). You will see how a child explains why poured water is still the same amount, how children sort and order things, and how they hold information in mind while they work. You will also meet two popular ideas about learning and intelligence and what the evidence says about each. Every age in this chapter is a typical range, never a deadline.

• Already covered: Week 9's preoperational stage and Week 10's early social-emotional growth.
• This week: concrete operational thought, information processing, intelligence, and learning.
• How they connect: the same Piaget tasks return, and the typical answer changes.
• Where we're going next: Week 12, social-emotional development in middle childhood.

Focus

How do school-age children's bodies and thinking change, and what does their reasoning show?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] explain conservation with reversibility
• [ ] work the counts in the class-inclusion task
• [ ] tell working memory from long-term memory
• [ ] state the learning-styles evidence accurately
• [ ] explain what an IQ score compares

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 11 (~35–45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
3. Try the practice set (15–25 minutes).
4. Do the workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment, then the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: read a child's reason as the evidence of conservation, not the answer alone.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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