A. Changes in physical / body shape
The period of the mid and late childhood include slow growth and consistent. This period is a quiet period before a fairly rapid growth was a teenager. Some important aspects body changes in this period are the height, weight and motor skills.
B. Weight and height development
During elementary school years, children grow an average of up to 5 to 7.6 a year, so that at the end of the age of the children is about 11 years, average height of girls reached 147 cm high and high while boys men reached 146 cm. Children's feet become longer and the body becomes thinner. During the years of the mid and late childhood, children's weight on average 2.3 to 3.2 kg per year. weight increase was mainly due to increase in size of skeletal and muscular systems, as well as the size of several organs. Mass and muscle strength gradually increased at the same "fat baby" (baby fat) is reduced. And knee movements are flexible in the early days of children improve muscle strength. Increasing muscle strength due to hereditary factors and sport. Their power capabilities doubled during these years. Due to the large amount of their muscle cells, boys are generally stronger than girls.
C. motor skills
During their stay in the middle and end of the childhood, motoric development of children becomes more subtle and more coordinated than in the early childhood. At the age of 10 or 11 years most children can learn to play sports, running, climbing, jumping rope, swimming, cycling. It is a bit of a lot of physical skills which can be mastered by children of elementary school. These physical skills are a source of pleasure and a great achievement for the children. In rough motoric skills that include large muscle activities, boys are usually more nimble than girls.
When children enter elementary school years, they gain greater control over their body and can sit or stand in a longer time. But elementary school children is far away from physical maturity, and they must be active. They become more saturated because of sitting too long rather than because of running, jumping, or cycling. The physical act is important for these children to refine their skills are being developed such as hitting a ball, jump rope, or make a movement on the balance beam. Therefore, in principle, elementary school children should be actively involved rather than passive in these activities.
The increase in myelin-(a veil of nerves that helps nerve impulses to move faster) in the central nervous system is reflected in the improvement of motor skills rough during mid and late children. Imagination of children used more agile as a tool. Children aged six years is able to hit, punch, tie shoelaces, and button a shirt. At the age of seven years children become more powerful. At this age, children are more like a pencil instead of crayons to paint, and more rarely write letters upside down. Writing becomes smaller. From age 8 to 10 years, the hand can be used freely for easy and precise. Developing fine motor coordination in which the children had to write and not just write letters one by one. Font size becomes smaller and more evenly. At the age of 10 to 12 years, children begin to demonstrate manipulative skills resemble adult abilities. They began to assert the complex movements, complex and fast it takes to produce good-quality crafts or play a difficult song with a musical instrument. The girls usually surpass men in these skills.
D. Cognitive Development
Piaget's Theory and Operational Thought
Piaget believes that preschool children are preoperational thinking. Preoperational thinking involves the formation of concepts that remain, mental reasoning, highlighting the attitude of egocentrism, and the formation of supernatural belief systems. Thinking during the preschool years is still not perfect and not organized well. Piaget believed operational concrete thinking does not appear until the age of 7 years. Concrete operational thinking described imperfections preschool children in thinking about concrete operational skills sort of conservation and classification. The characteristics of concrete operational thinking emphasizes the competencies of elementary school children.
Concrete Operational Thought
Piaget explained that concrete operational thinking (concrete operational thought) consists of the operations of mental actions that allow the child to do mentally what has been done before physically. Concrete operations is also the mental actions that are contrary. Among test ever conducted by Piaget is the conservation of materials. A child was given two identical ball of wax. Actors experiment roll one ball into a form of long, thin. The ball the other one remains in the form of the original ball. Children then were asked if more candles in the balls or in long thin pieces of wax? By the time children reach the age of 7 or 8 years, the answer most often given is the amount of wax is the same. To answer that question correctly, children must imagine that the wax ball rolled into a field that long, thin, and then returned to form the origin which round. This type of imagination include mental acts that are contrary. Thus the concrete operation is a mental act contrary to the objects that are real and concrete. Concrete operations allow children to coordinate some of the characteristics and instead focus on a single property of an object. In the example of wax preoperational child seems more focused on the height and width. Concrete operational children to coordinate information about the second dimension.
One of the important skills that characterize concrete operational child is the ability to classify or divide things into the devices or sub-sub devices are different and take into account their relation.
E. Memory Development
Large increases occur in the memory span of short-term memory in the early childhood, but at the age of 7 years after the increase was not as in previous times. While Long Term Memory is relatively fixed and unlimited increases with age during the mid and late children. Two aspects memory associated with increased long-term memory is the process control (control processes) and student characteristics (learner characteristic).
Long-term memory depends on the activities of individual learning when studying and remembering information. Control processes are cognitive processes that do not happen automatically, but requires effort and effort. This process is under the control consciousness of students and can be used to improve memory. This process is also referred to as strategies. Three process control (control) important is happening in children which is a process repetition (Rehearsal), organization, and comparisons (imagery).
Repetition is a process control that improve memory, to repeat information after the information was shown. Repetition occurs, for example when a child hears a number phone than repeat the number several times to improve their memory about the number.
Another control process that develops when children are in middle and late childhood are the comparison. Strategy powerful comparison is the keyword method has been used in a practical way to teach elementary school children how to master the new information fast crate vocabulary words of foreign languages, state parts and state capitals.
Another thing that affects the memory are the properties of the child. Many properties that determine the effectiveness of the memory of them is the attitude, motivation and health
F. Development of critical thinking
Knowledge has been acquired by the child when the educational lessons filtered off like grains of sand that washed through the sieve. Children need to do more than just passively absorb new information. They must learn how to think critically. In general, the definition of critical thinking is to understand the deeper meaning of the problem, keep the mind stay open to all approaches and different views and think reflectively and not just accept the claims and do procedures without understanding and significant evaluation. Critical thinking must be used not only inside the classroom but also outside the classroom.
To think critically or solve every problem, or learn any new knowledge, the children must take an active role in learning. it means that children need to develop various processes active thinking, as below:
- Listen carefully
- Identify or formulate questions
- Organize their thoughts
- Shows similarities and differences
- Perform deduction (reasoning from general to specific)
- Differentiate between conclusions that logically valid and invalid
Children also must learn how to ask clarifying questions like "what's the point?" What you mean by that statement? And why? "
In summary critical thinking refers to the understanding of the meaning of the problems in more depth, keeping an open mind on the various approaches and different views, and think more reflectively and not accept the claims and implementing procedures without significant understanding and evaluation . To cultivate critical thinking in children, we must teach them to use the correct thinking process, develop problem-solving strategies, improve their mental image, to expand the foundations of knowledge and to motivate them using thinking skills newly developed.
G. Creativity development
Creativity is ability to think of something new ways and unusual and gave birth to a unique solution to the problems. When creative people like artists and scientists asked what made them to solve problems by the new way, they say that the ability to find the similarities among the elements that a cursory look unrelated, plays an important role. They also say have the time and independence in a pleasant setting for the birth of various likelihood solution to a problem.
How big is the relevance of creativity and intelligence? Although most people are quite intelligent, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Many people who have a high IQ but not creative.
Some experts still doubt that we will never fully understand the creative process. However, most experts agree, that the concept of creativity bubbling in spontaneous just a myth. Flash of an idea that appears suddenly and continued by shadow, make only a small portion creative process. The essence of the creative process is the ability and experience that shape the mission of individual effort and relentless continuous and lifelong.
Creativity is a different matter with intelligence. The difference is by the experts referred to as convergent Thinking that produce one correct answer and characterize the kind of thinking based on standard intelligence tests and the divergent thinking that is producing a lot of answers to the same questions and more characterized by creativity.
H. Language Development
The children experience changes in vocabulary and grammar they are in the middle of the children and the children lately. This is influenced by the activity of reading. Reading has a very important role for their language repertoire.
During the mid and late childhood, there was a change of mind with words. Children tend to be less bound by the actions and perceptual dimensions associated with words, and they become more analytical approach to the words, such as when they were asked to say the first thing that entered their thoughts when they hear a word like dog , preschool children often answered with a word related to the context which is close to a dog. A child may connect dog and said with a word that shows the appearance (black, large) or with an act relating to dogs (barking, sitting). Children older dog replied by linking words with an appropriate category (animals) or with incorrect information escalate intellectual concepts such as cats, the vet.
Children's ability to analyze these words help them to add the abstract words into their vocabulary. For example, precious stones can be understood by understanding the general characteristics of diamonds and emeralds. They will also understand the differences of words such as cousins and nephews, with village and city suburbs, through word analysis skills they possess.
Elementary school children had also increased so that more logical thinking to help them understand the use of words such as comparisons (shorter, more in) and the words of nature. At the end of primary school children usually can apply a lot of grammar rules as appropriate.
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psychological review
