What are the keys to school readiness? | Integrated Learning Therapy

According to the University of Melbourne¹, the bedrock of a child’s educational preparation are hearing, vision and communication. These three play vital roles in a child’s ability to absorb, engage and thrive in the classroom.

Listening: A gateway to learning

Even though a young chld’s hearing may be tested as normal, as they grow, some can develop mild or more serious learning losses. Sometimes children develop “glue ear” following ear infections, a common childhood condition that causes a hearing loss that might be unnoticed even though it can be treated.

Even a mild hearing loss can disrupt learning by interfering with a child’s capacity to understand spoken language clearly, follow instructions, engage in discussions or grasp crucial explanations during lessons. Hearing impairments may not be recognised until the classroom teacher starts to notice delays in learning and behaviours like inattention and difficulty following instructions.

A child with a mild hearing loss with also have to put more effort into listening, which can make youngsters more worn out and irritable.

It is not only what we can hear, but how we can hear important messages against other, competing sounds in the environment. There is growing evidence that the poorer a child’s ability to listen in a noisy environment, the greater the risk of developing literacy delays.

Thorough hearing checks should be part of school preparation.

Vision: Supporting school readiness and positive learning experiences

Most young children are visual learners and it’s estimated that 80% of a young child’s learning occurs through the eyes, making clear and effective vision a cornerstone for positive school learning experiences.

As children advance in their academic journey, increasing demands are placed on their visual system, such as having to read from the board, read books with smaller print and interacting with electronic devices.

Watch closely for signs of vision problems, including sitting too close to the TV, difficulty maintaining their place while reading, holding books close, reluctance to engage in reading and close-up tasks, tilting the head, closing one eye, rubbing the eyes, complaining of headaches and displaying a short attention span.

While these signs may not conclusively indicate a vision problem, it would certainly be wise to have a thorough eye check-up, preferably from a Developmental or Behavioural Optometrist.

Speech and language development: The building blocks of communication

Language—understanding and using words and sentences to express oneself—is the key to our ability to communicate and is critical for the development of reading and writing during the school years.

Children who enter school with a good language foundation often show enhanced reading comprehension, expressive abilities and better overall academic performance.

Helping them develop language includes encouraging language-rich environments at home and in early childhood settings like creches and pre-schools. Read aloud with children, engage in conversations and expose them to diverse vocabulary.

Additionally, early identification and support for children facing language delays or disorders is crucial to help them succeed academically.

Communication is not just about the words you say, but how you say them. By the time a child is ready to start school, their speech should be easily understood by a stranger. You might be able to understand everything your child says (you speak to them every day), but would a new teacher or a new friend understand them?

They might not say every word or every sound perfectly, but can they get their message across? This is so important for a child’s learning, not only in the classroom but on the playground, on the sports field and on weekends.

Research shows that certain speech sound production difficulties are associated with difficulties in literacy (reading and spelling) in the later school years.

A Speech Therapist should be able to help with an assessment if you are concerned.

Of course there are other developmental conditions that can impact on a child’s ability to thrive in school but there is no doubt that our sight, hearing and language are keys to a promising start to school.

¹Provided by Dani Tomlin, Peter Carew, Ruth Braden, Christine Nearchou and Miya St John, University of Melbourne

Image provided by Freepik

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.