Question

Apply 2 specific ideas from Piaget's model to counseling or teaching a six year old?

Answer 1

Hello there,

Jean Piaget, in his cognitive development theory describes the way a person observes, assimilates and accommodates a new information. This theory describes the learning process and patterns of different age group and thus has been crowned as one the best learning theories till date.

As far as a six year old child is concerned, it falls under the preoperational stage (2-7years) of Piaget's cognitive theory. Below are the two prime ideas I would apply from Piaget's theory to accomplish the aforementioned task :

• At this stage, because a children is adept at using symbols and images to represent his thoughts, he can be taught calculation using his hands. Numbers can be introduced using images.
• Children begin to speak language at this stage. Thus, a certain word can be repeated in front of him while keeping it's image can be helpful. For example we can put an apple in front of him and repeat the word "Apple" again and again so that he could assimilate the fact that this fruit is an apple. In the similar ways, many elementary ideas can be established.
• Children at this stage engage in pretend play. Hence, play way or kindergarten methods can be used in order to facilitate learning.

Hope that helps,